Improving student achievement can't be done by lowering standards

A recent arrival to New York, trying to determine the purpose of our schools and their major challenges, could easily be confused.

They could think, as some New Yorkers seem to, that the crucial education issues are the mostly imaginary ones spurring outbursts and driving political candidacies: curriculum that supposedly demonizes the United States, reading lists and libraries supposedly beset by the scourge of sexual awareness literature, and young children supposedly being groomed by pedophiles.

It’s shocking that during a 30-month pandemic period when New York’s districts faced massive challenges in the delivery of education, and often failed to meet them, so much focus has centered on such phantom issues.

Recently released New York data from 2021 shows that more than 80% of graduates statewide utilized exemptions from Regents exams to earn diplomas. Now a "Blue Ribbon" panel is seemingly poised to continue down the well-trod path toward easier graduation requirements. 

As many parents are well aware, our students are in trouble, with far too large a cohort receiving far too little education. Part of the blame goes to lower standards. New York’s high school graduation rate in 2012 was 76.7%. In 2021, it was 86.1%, an extraordinary jump that would provide a clear opportunity to exult, if school districts existed to dispense diplomas. 

They don’t.

COMPETENCY IS KEY

They exist to provide educations, which should be the same thing but increasingly isn’t. If you loosen standards enough you can make earning a diploma easy, but that won’t make the recipients educated enough to succeed in life. Nor will loosening standards on core subjects magically lead to schools educating kids on financial literacy or civic engagement or any other topic that needs more attention according to those who assail rigor in testing.

Such skills do need more emphasis. But lowering graduating standards in math, English, science, and history won’t help. And competency in those subjects can’t be sacrificed in favor of learning workaday skills.

In a decade that saw graduation scores jump 9.4 percentage points, evidence indicates that lowered standards, not improved performance, deserve credit for the shift.

How do we know? Fewer than 40% of New York’s graduating high school students are ready for college. Of those who do attend, 40% to 60% need remediation to learn what their high schools failed to instill. Remediation classes cost the same as regular ones, but confer no credit. So a student denied an appropriate education in high school must pay for high school classes in college, often borrowing to do so. 

And with the four-year college graduation rate for students who need remediation hovering around 10%, many of those kids will owe money but lack a degree, certification, or even a college credit. 

RIGOR IS NEEDED

Ten years ago, New York's students generally had to pass five Regents exams to graduate. Last year, thanks to steadily lowering standards and newly generous exemptions, 10% of diploma recipients passed two or fewer. 

Much of the shift in the past two years was due to the pandemic: The state canceled Regents exams completely in 2020 and partially in 2021, and increased testing exemptions. But standards were loosening steadily for years before that. 

For decades, New York students needed a 65 or better on five Regents tests to graduate. Those standards were weakened slowly until the lowest score a student can get on those tests and still graduate is a 50, and that 50 is actually a 20; raw scores are “adjusted” on the grading scale to make sure enough kids pass.

On the Algebra I Regents last year, a student had to earn a shockingly paltry 17 of 86 available points to get to that adjusted score of 50 (a raw test score of 20) and a diploma. 

And the questions are class-appropriate.

There are many great schools across New York, and on Long Island in particular. But there are plenty of districts that struggle to educate pupils, and plenty of students in even the highest-performing districts who struggle with their learning.

Lowering standards especially hurts poor students, those with special needs and minorities, because easing the standard they need to reach to paint their teachers and schools as successful lowers the bar. When you lower the bar, you lessen the accomplishments.

The federal government gave New York’s schools $9 billion to address pandemic-caused shortfalls in education. The state has helped out with two huge school aid increases, and another is budgeted.

An all-out effort to utilize that money to get kids back up to speed is needed. Our energy must be devoted to moving them toward the goal line of a meaningful diploma that reflects an appropriate education, not moving that goal line to change the definition of success.    

As the state’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures prepares to begin its work in earnest, the political momentum is away from rigorous, objective tests and toward subjective performance reviews. That would put us on the fast path to easy diplomas, rather than the more difficult road of bestowing skills.

That can’t be allowed to happen.