American high schools are again under fire, and this time, Judge Manning (the judge presiding over the Leandro case) isn’t the one fanning the flames. Rather, Governors from most of the states have entered the fray, calling for reforms to American high schools and to data collection on graduation rates.
At the annual meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) this month, 47 Governors signed Graduation Counts: A Compact on State High School Graduation Data, a commitment to improving data collection on a variety of measures including graduation rates and other student outcomes. In addition, the Governors pledged to begin implementing a “standard, four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate,” and to report annually on progress made collecting dropout and graduation data. The U.S. Department of Education, in recognition of widespread statistical inconsistencies, announced at the NGA meeting that it would provide an “Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate,” appearing alongside state data.
The discussion over the diverse (and often inaccurate) way in which state graduation data are reported is the latest round in a controversy sparked by Jay Greene’s 2001 report on high school graduation rates. This report revealed much lower graduation rates for many states than were reported by state education agencies. (Consider that in 2003, the state Department of Public Instruction reported North Carolina’s graduation rate as 97%, while Mr. Greene found our graduation rate to be 63%). Clearly, Mr. Greene’s sensible formula (calculating how many 9th graders actually graduate 4 years later) incited vigorous debate over the ill-conceived formulas used to determine these rates in many states.
There’s no question that implementing universal standards for data collection will give us a better idea of how students are doing, and how states compare to one another. But it will not solve the more fundamental issue: current curriculum and teaching methods fail to inculcate basic knowledge in many American adolescents, whether state data reflects this or not. And high school students are the first to agree. In fact, an online survey of more than 10,000 teenagers conducted by the NGA found that high schoolers know they are not stretched academically: a large majority say their work is not particularly difficult. Fewer than two-thirds of these students felt that their high schools had done a good job of challenging them academically or preparing them for college.
What can we do? Much depends on how we resolve the following dilemma: Do we simply use high schools to prepare students for the workforce, or do we provide students with a foundational, classical education? Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy and vociferous advocate of a school-to-work agenda, would have us believe our high school crisis is a result of students who are ill-prepared for work in the global economy. Unfortunately, Mr. Tucker’s controversial school-to-work agenda has influenced high school reforms over the past 13 years. In fact, his 1992 letter to Hillary Clinton, outlining his recommendations for reforming America’s education system, can be found in the Congressional Record.
Clearly, our high schools are badly in need of reform. Correcting the flaws in our data collection process is a good first step. But we also need to be clear that high school is not just a place where students acquire vocational skills. Rather, adolescents should be immersed in the academic basics, like mathematics, history, and literature. Exposing students to a rich and rigorous academic curriculum prepares them for engagement in all facets of life, not just the labor market.