People who are convinced that nothing good is happening in U.S. education should take a look at a little pamphlet that was just issued by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). "High School Students Ten Years After A Nation At Risk" presents data about student course taking and achievement that are surprising and encouraging.
One of the important recommendations of A Nation At Risk was that students take more demanding coursework, and many states revised their high school graduation requirements accordingly. As a result, the percentages of students taking traditional academic courses in math and science have risen dramatically. The same is true for foreign languages. For example, in 1982, only 48 percent of graduating seniors had taken geometry, but by 1992, the number had risen to 70 percent. The number of students taking calculus more than doubled (from 4 percent to 10 percent), as did the number taking biology, chemistry and physics (from 10 percent to 22 percent).
But what does all that mean in terms of student achievement? When states upped their graduation requirements, skeptics--and I was one of them--wondered whether the change would turn out to be a sham. Would students really get more rigorous courses? Or would the courses just turn out to be renamed versions of "General Science" and "Business Math"?
In fact, the skepticism turned out to be unwarranted. The courses are more rigorous, and student achievement in math and science has risen during the ten years since A Nation At Risk. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exams show increases in average math and science proficiency at every level tested. For instance, the average math score for 17-year-olds in 1992 was 9 points higher than in 1982-- which represents, NCES reckons, a gain of about one year. And there were comparable gains in science. Academic course taking, as we have also seen in other studies, results in higher student achievement.
Other people worried about the effect that stiffer graduation requirements would have on equity. They feared that raising standards would cause students who were already doing poorly in school to drop out in great numbers. This fear had also come up when minimum competency testing for high school graduation was instituted in the 1970s. It turned out to be unfounded then--students wanted their diplomas and did what was needed to get them--and the new graduation requirements seem to have worked in the same way. NAEP math and science scores for the lowest-performing students--those in the 10th percentile--actually increased by 11 points in math and 12 points in science. And dropout rates for students in high school diminished instead of getting larger: "The 10th- to 12th- grade dropout rate declined by 5 percentage points between 1980 and 1990. Eleven percent of 1980 sophomores left school by the spring of 1982 without a high school diploma or its equivalent; the comparable rate for 1990 sophomores was 6 percent."
Of course, no one would contend that these improvements, substantial though they are, have solved all our educational problems. As the NCES pamphlet shows us, the achievement of our top students has remained flat over the ten-year period. Our lowest-achieving students are doing better, but their performance--like that of our top students--is poor in comparison with students in other industrialized nations. And while science and math achievement have improved, reading, which is mediocre at every level, has stayed the same. In other words, we have a long way to go.
Nevertheless, it is also a mistake not to acknowledge the progress we have made. Setting higher standards works. When we expect more of students, they rise to our expectations. Requiring that students take more rigorous courses is not as sexy as some currently popular school reform schemes--like vouchers or putting public schools under private management or letting each school do its own thing. But there is no track record on any of these reforms. Requiring that students take demanding courses is something that works. It works in the successful school systems of other industrialized democracies and it is working here. Let's build on it.