Whenever there is a push to raise educational standards, we hear cries from the opposition. What is the point of raising standards when so many students cannot meet the current low standards? Doing that is like raising the bar on the high jump to 6 feet 8 inches when most of the contestants can't even clear the bar at 6 feet. The objection sounds reasonable, but it's wrong.
After A Nation At Risk came out in the early 1980s, many states stiffened the requirements for high school graduation. They called for more science and math and English courses, and they refused to accept some of the old, soft courses as fulfillment of graduation requirements. Critics predicted that these reforms would cause students to drop out in droves, but that did not happen. Students took the new and tougher courses, passed them and got their diplomas as before.
Something similar happened in the 1970s and 1980s when more than half the states started requiring high school students to pass minimum competency tests in order to receive a high school diploma. These were not tough tests. Most of the reading and math tests were at a 7th- or 8th-grade level. And when the tests were instituted, half of the kids about to graduate high school flunked.
Opponents of competency tests also predicted that raising the bar would cause a big increase in school dropout rates. After all, how could students be expected to meet 7th- or 8th-grade standards when some of them could not pass 4th- or 5th-grade tests? These critics were surprised when, within a short time, most states reported that 95 percent of their students were passing the new tests. Not only was there no increase in dropout rates, in many states there was a decrease. How can this be explained?
Before the tougher graduation requirements and the minimum competency tests were put into place, students knew that they would get their diplomas even if they did no work. All they had to do was put in the required seat time. Many left school because they were not challenged. Others stayed and learned what they had to: nothing.
The competency tests, like the new graduation requirements, introduced the factor of hiqh stakes. Students realized that if thev were not able to -- pass the courses and the tests, there would be no diploma. They wanted the diploma because they knew that, while future employers do not require transcripts, grades or teacher recommendations, they are interested in whether a prospective employee is a high school graduate or a dropout.
What did the students do? What anyone who wants something that is out of reach does. They worked for it. Furthermore, they were no longer bored by sitting around waiting to have the diploma handed to them; they were challenged by the work they had to do to earn one. High stakes turned out to be a great benefit to these students.
So far, I've given you the good news. Now comes the bad news. If you were helping athletes improve their jumping and you got 95 percent of those in your charge to jump 6 feet, what would you do next? You would raise the bar another inch or so, and when most of them were regularly jumping at that height, you'd raise the bar again, and you would keep on going. But not in the world of education!
Some states have had minimum competency testing in place for twenty years. You would expect that when a great majority of students were able to achieve at the minimum competency level, the states would have introduced new and tougher exams--exams that would set the graduation standard at the 8th- to 9th-grade level. Or that if the states continued using the same 7th- and 8th-grade exams, they'd require students to pass them a year or two earlier. Eventually, these exams should have been given as a requirement to enter high school rather than to graduate from it. And high school seniors should have been required to take the kinds of exams that students in other industrial nations do. That did not happen. The states just sat back, and they have been satisfied to have the same low standards today that they had twenty years ago.
There is a mood in the country that rejects everything the federal government does and places great faith in the states. Education is and has been a state responsibility, and the states have done some good things in education. But as the minimum competency exams show us, state control is no cure-all. States need prodding from business or outside challenges like the one provided by A Nation At Risk. If we are interested in correcting what is wrong with our schools, we'd better not be satisfied with just leaving it to the states.