The graduation conundrum
In recent months and years, there has been a push towards firming up high school graduation requirements and aligning them with college admissions standards. The A-G curriculum in California springs to mind, and there have been many articles like this one coming out of Missouri:
In many ways, making graduation really mean something is a wonderful trend. Students shouldn't be graduating without the basic skills that they can parlay either into a postsecondary education or a good job; in other words, without the basic skills to have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. But beneath the surface lies a disturbing paradox: kids who fail the tests or fail to meet the requirements are being punished for what in many cases is the fault of the system.
As I've noted before, best we can tell, the nationwide graduation rate is somewhere around 70% overall and 50% for minorities. The evidence is murky on whether exit exams or stricter graduation requirements have a substantial impact on the number of dropouts; an August 2005 report from the Center on Education Policy summed it up: "No consensus has emerged from research on how exit exams impact graduation or dropout rates, although state data indicate exit exams may exacerbate disparities in graduation rates between white and Asian students on one hand, and black, Hispanic, and Native American students on the other." Nevertheless, it is clear that far too many students are hitting 10th, 11th, 12th grades unable to beat the cut. For example, almost 100,000 California seniors, or 20% of the class, failed their latest chance on the state's exit exam this year, while over 23,000 Arizona high schoolers, or 37% of that class, have only two more tries. Let's not even talk about Florida.
The question becomes who takes responsibility for the failures. Certainly personal responsibility cannot be discarded, and some sliver of students are deadset against learning and have been for years and could care less about failing a test they don't want to be taking in the first place.
But they weren't born that way. In many if not most situations, the love of learning has simply been beaten out of these kids as a result of attending poor schools in poor buildings with poor teachers and poor resources. This isn't to minimize the impact of home life and environment, but merely to suggest that when tens of thousands of people are chugging along through the grades and then run face-first into a brick wall around 10th grade, perhaps it's not primarily their fault. Yet they are the ones being punished for it by having their opportunities and potential wrenchingly stunted by the absence of a high school degree.
I titled this post "the graduation conundrum," and here is the conundrum: We have to choose between lowering graduation standards and letting everyone graduate even if they don't have a full set of basic skills, or raising graduation standards and ensuring that everyone who graduates is properly armed but shut out a multitude of students who have done nothing wrong.
I'm not really sure what the answer is to that puzzle, and I'm not really sure what should be done in the short-term. The only way out I see is to eliminate the premises: Elevate education in this country from the earliest years to such a quality level that no child reaches high school unable to reasonably graduate under rigorous, aligned curriculum. Otherwise, the end of the pipeline will continue to fester as a lose-lose proposition with a very real impact on peoples' lives.
In addition, 19 states currently have high school exit exams, and 7 have them in the works.The state Board of Education approved more stringent high school graduation requirements Thursday for the roughly 900,000 students in public schools.
The change raises the credits needed to graduate from 22 to 24, with fewer electives, beginning with students who graduate from high school in 2010. That means today's eighth graders will need to keep the requirements in mind next year when mapping out the courses they intend to take in high school.
Key to the new requirements are additional required courses in English, math, social studies and science, along with newly required courses in health and personal finance.
In many ways, making graduation really mean something is a wonderful trend. Students shouldn't be graduating without the basic skills that they can parlay either into a postsecondary education or a good job; in other words, without the basic skills to have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. But beneath the surface lies a disturbing paradox: kids who fail the tests or fail to meet the requirements are being punished for what in many cases is the fault of the system.
As I've noted before, best we can tell, the nationwide graduation rate is somewhere around 70% overall and 50% for minorities. The evidence is murky on whether exit exams or stricter graduation requirements have a substantial impact on the number of dropouts; an August 2005 report from the Center on Education Policy summed it up: "No consensus has emerged from research on how exit exams impact graduation or dropout rates, although state data indicate exit exams may exacerbate disparities in graduation rates between white and Asian students on one hand, and black, Hispanic, and Native American students on the other." Nevertheless, it is clear that far too many students are hitting 10th, 11th, 12th grades unable to beat the cut. For example, almost 100,000 California seniors, or 20% of the class, failed their latest chance on the state's exit exam this year, while over 23,000 Arizona high schoolers, or 37% of that class, have only two more tries. Let's not even talk about Florida.
The question becomes who takes responsibility for the failures. Certainly personal responsibility cannot be discarded, and some sliver of students are deadset against learning and have been for years and could care less about failing a test they don't want to be taking in the first place.
But they weren't born that way. In many if not most situations, the love of learning has simply been beaten out of these kids as a result of attending poor schools in poor buildings with poor teachers and poor resources. This isn't to minimize the impact of home life and environment, but merely to suggest that when tens of thousands of people are chugging along through the grades and then run face-first into a brick wall around 10th grade, perhaps it's not primarily their fault. Yet they are the ones being punished for it by having their opportunities and potential wrenchingly stunted by the absence of a high school degree.
I titled this post "the graduation conundrum," and here is the conundrum: We have to choose between lowering graduation standards and letting everyone graduate even if they don't have a full set of basic skills, or raising graduation standards and ensuring that everyone who graduates is properly armed but shut out a multitude of students who have done nothing wrong.
I'm not really sure what the answer is to that puzzle, and I'm not really sure what should be done in the short-term. The only way out I see is to eliminate the premises: Elevate education in this country from the earliest years to such a quality level that no child reaches high school unable to reasonably graduate under rigorous, aligned curriculum. Otherwise, the end of the pipeline will continue to fester as a lose-lose proposition with a very real impact on peoples' lives.
This entry was posted
on Friday, October 07, 2005 at 11:39 AM.
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