The Achieve Agenda: Exits exams are only one part of the plan

Achieve, Inc., the organization that formed the American Diploma Project in 2005, recently released its 2008 annual progress report on the alignment of high school policies with the organization’s multipronged action agenda, emphasizing that states must work harder to change their curriculum, diplomas, data collection and accountability systems to be what it calls “college- and career-ready.”  The report, titled Closing the Expectations Gap, is posted on Achieve’s Web site at www.achieve.org.

Achieve reports that 32 states, including Pennsylvania, are part of the American Diploma Project Network that is described as a coalition of states committed to “aligning high school standards, assessments, graduation requirements and accountability systems with the demands of college and the workplace.”   

According to the report, the Achieve agenda includes these stated goals:

1. Align high school standards with postsecondary expectations. Achieve says 19 states have “aligned standards” and participated in Achieve’s Alignment Institutes.  Of that number, 12 states’ standards in math and English are aligned with the expectations in the ADP benchmarks; Achieve has not formally reviewed the other seven states.  According to Achieve, 13 states anticipate adopting the ADP-aligned standards in 2008, including Pennsylvania.

2. Require all students to complete the same curriculum in order to earn a diploma. The goal is for states to “elevate their high school diploma requirements to the ADP-recommended college- and career-ready level.” The report notes that seven states (Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee) and the District of Columbia have set mandatory course requirements without opt-out provisions. Eleven states require students to automatically enroll in the “default college- and career-ready curriculum” but allow them to opt out of the requirements if their parents sign a waiver. (Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas)

In these states, students entering ninth grade are automatically enrolled in college prep courses. States with opt-out provisions have structured their plans in one of two ways. About half of the states provide a minimum diploma sequence that is required for students who opt out. They receive a different diploma and their transcript indicates that they completed a less rigorous curriculum. The other half of the states may allow students, with parental and school consent, to opt out of specific courses, most often advanced math courses. Students who do this receive the same diplomas as students who do not opt out, but their transcripts indicate the change.

The Achieve report notes that the opt-out provisions are “designed to preserve an element of choice for parents and students,” they also have “the potential of opening the door to continued tracking. States with opt-out provisions will need to carefully monitor how many and which students move into the less rigorous curricular track and ensure that the provision is not abused.”

3. Require schools to administer college readiness tests to all high school students as part of their state assessment system. Achieve recommends that states need to go beyond their existing tests and have a component of their high school assessment systems that “measures the more advanced skills valued by postsecondary institutions and employers.”  The report indicates that nine states have “college-and career-ready tests.” Three states (California, New York and Texas) do this by using state-developed high school assessments that require a higher score that on tests required for graduation. Six states (Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan and Tennessee) require all students to take a national college admissions exam as part of their state assessment systems.

Achieve reports that 23 states plan to administer new or upgraded high school assessments that “have the potential to be used by postsecondary institutions to determine the readiness of incoming students.”

4. Require states to have “P-20 data systems” that track the individual progress of students from prekindergarten through college graduation.  Achieve says that it is critically important for states to develop longitudinal data systems with the capacity to track student progress from high school through postsecondary education. According to Achieve, the benefit of a P-20 data system would be to “enable policymakers and educators to compare high school course-taking, grades and assessment results with placement and performance in first-year college courses, college credit accumulation and persistence and ultimately degree completion rates and career success.”  The report indicates that nine states have P-20 data systems (Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming) and that 37 states are developing or planning their P-20 data systems. Pennsylvania is included in that list, with plans to be online sometime between 2009-2011.

Interestingly, Achieve says that technology is not the main barrier that states face in developing a P-20 data system that matches K-12 student records with postsecondary records. The main barriers are what Achieve calls  “political and legal challenges” – no legislative or regulatory policies in place to allow the matching to occur, questions about who has the authority over data collection and matching, and confusion about what is allowable under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

5. Require states to develop accountability and reporting systems that promote college and career readiness. Achieve says that accountability models driven by attendance, graduation rates and performance on high school assessments are not adequate measures of college and career readiness. Instead, “a state accountability system should include, among other indicators, an accurate cohort graduation rate; whether students have completed a college-and career-ready curriculum; whether students score at the college-and career-ready level on a high school assessment; and the placement of college-going graduates into credit-bearing, non-remedial courses in English and math.”

The report calls for postsecondary institutions and employers to hold high school accountable for the readiness of their graduates, suggesting that states publicly release the percentage of recent high school graduates who are required to take remedial courses on entering college.  Another suggestion is for states to consider whether postsecondary institutions have established a common placement standard and how reliable the placement assessment is in assessing that standard. Achieve notes “If the placement standard is different across institutions, comparing remediation rates across high schools is more difficult.” 

Achieve reinforces its call for states to adopt its recommendations for common curriculum, graduation requirements, assessments and accountability systems.

“States will need to pay more attention to these policy levers if the promise of these reforms is to be realized. Newly adopted standards will be of marginal value without aligned assessments to measure student performance. Similarly, raising graduation requirements for students without holding schools accountable for ensuring that students meet the new standards is both unfair and ineffective,” Achieve concludes. 

Achieve is governed by a 12-member Board of Directors that includes Pennsylvania’s Gov. Edward Rendell.