Are high school graduation standards too low?

On Tuesday, I asked whether it matters that U.S. graduation standards have collapsed, and today, Dan Goldhaber, Checker Finn, Matt Gandal, and Ed Lambert reply: “hell yes!” We also round up smart takes on school boards, school choice, federal staffing cuts, and more from Robert Pondiscio, Katie Reed, Meagan Booth, Colyn Ritter, Chad Aldeman, Rick Hess, and Susan Haas. And Jorge Elorza takes a stab at depolarizing gifted education.

It’s arguably never been easier to graduate from high school in America than it is today. Are we OK with that?

Dan Goldhaber:

This is one of those issues where it seems to me there are important network-type effects that are hard to see in the short run, but also where the directionality is clear.

Let’s look at the extremes. If we have very high high-school graduation standards, it’s obvious that those students who clear the bar benefit from the “graduate” label. And if we have very low standards, it’s obvious that the graduates, even the best of them, do not get much benefit from the mostly worthless credential.

This spectrum means that, while we never observe it, there are differential effects on students, and that, at some places in the distribution of standards, lowering standards is likely a net positive for graduates but additional lowering will be a net negative.

Indeed, when standards are high enough, we could probably give away high school graduation to some students, benefiting them (in terms of the credential, I’m ignoring the incentive effects), without doing too much harm to those who are working for graduating (and demonstrating that they clear the bar).

Where are we in this distribution of standards? That’s the question. I’d certainly argue that our standards are too low right now; it’s impossible to ignore the divergence between high school graduation rates and objective/test measures of learning. No doubt we are headed in the wrong direction, but we probably won’t know that definitively, or at least have a social consensus about it, for a long time—until we see that the high school graduation credential is no longer a useful one in the labor market.

Checker Finn:

Dan’s right: standards are too low now, and we’re headed in the wrong direction. I also think