High Bars or Behind Bars? The Effect of Graduation Requirements on Arrest Rates

This paper investigates the effect of high school graduation requirements on arrest rates with a specific focus on the number of required courses and the use of exit exams. Identifying variation comes from state-by-cohort changes in the laws governing high school graduation requirements from 1980 to 2010. Combining these law changes with arrest rates of young adults from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), I find that the use of exit exams can reduce arrest rates by approximately 7%. While it is difficult to parse out the exact mechanisms additional exploration into heterogeneity by age and offense as well as examination of labor market outcomes suggest that these policies may have increased learning. Given the current debate around the use of exit exams this paper provides evidence of beneficial effects on non-academic outcomes. This paper also provides further evidence of the influence of education policy on crime.

Common Core Standards (U.S.)

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are part of a third wave of school reform in the United States. With accompanying tests, these standards combine calls for increased academic rigor, beginning in the 1980s, with more recent efforts to hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for learning outcomes in publicly funded schools. Origins of CCSS can be traced to the 1996 National Education Summit where the National Governors Association (NGA), philanthropic foundations, and business leaders founded Achieve to broker rigorous high school graduation requirements. In 2009, Achieve became the project manager for the construction of CCSS. In 2010, implementation began with incentives from the Obama administration and funding from the Gates Foundation. Advocates choose among a variety of rationales: faltering American economic competitiveness, wide variability among state standards and educational outcomes, highly mobile student populations, and/or a growing income achievement gap. Critics cite federal intrusion in states’ rights, a lack of an evidentiary base, an autocratic process of CCSS production, and/or a mis-framing of problems facing public schools. With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, federal advocacy of CCSS ended officially.

Who Participates in High School Career Academies?

In response to increasing high school graduation requirements along with emerging skills in the workforce, the focus of career academies has evolved from one of keeping students enrolled in high school through graduation to a more robust preparation for college and careers for all students. This new focus may have resulted in a demographic shift in the students participating in career academies. To that end, the purpose of this study was to describe the demographics of students who participated in career academies in one Southeastern school district over a six-year period from 2007 – 2012. Findings indicate that a gender gap continues to exist among career academies. Additionally, when compared to the population across the district's high schools, while the career academies are becoming more diverse, participation of minority groups in career academies still lags behind that of their Caucasian counterparts. Implications for administrators and future research opportunities are also articulated.

Budget Woes

A small group of technology application teachers and campus IT specialists exchanged ideas about how the latest round of budget cuts might impact their jobs and technology on campus in general. Issues brought up included how schools “can do it all cheaper” if more online courses are added, how dual credit courses–that count both for high school graduation requirements and college credits–are becoming popular among families with much smaller tuition budgets, how teachers have to wait for 6-8 years for new computers instead of 4-5, how campus Web sites are out-dated due to lack of maintenance fees, and how campus instructional technologists are too busy fixing obsolete computers and equipment.

Achieving testing for English Language Learners, ready or not?.

School reform efforts across the US have focused on creating systems in which all students are expected to achieve to high standards. To ensure that students reach those standards and to document what students know and can do, schools collect assessment information on students' academic achievement. More information is needed, however, to find out when such assessments are appropriate for English learners and can provide meaningful information about what such learners know and can do. We describe and discuss a study that addresses the question of when it is appropriate to administer content area tests in English to English learners. Drawing on the student database of San Francisco Unified School District, we examined the effect of language demands on the SAT/9 mathematics scores of Chinese-speaking and Spanish-speaking students. Our results showed that while the English language demands of the problem solving subscale affect all students, they have a larger effect on English learners' performance, thus rendering the tests inaccurate in measuring English learners' subject matter achievement. Our results also showed that this effect gradually decreases as students become more proficient in English, taking five to six years for students to reach parity with national norms. These results have important implications for the design of school accountability systems and policies with high-stakes consequences for English learners such as high-school graduation requirements based on standardized tests.

Raising the Bar and Equity? Effects of State High School Graduation Requirements and Accountability Policies on Students' Mathematics Course Taking

In response to the national push to raise academic performance of all students, most states have adopted policies designed to raise academic standards, monitor progress toward those standards, and hold schools and students responsible for attaining them. Given the complex nature of the educational process, these policies are likely to have mixed effects on both general levels of attainment and stratification based on race or ethnicity and social class. Using nationally representative longitudinal data and hierarchical linear modeling, this article explored the association between students' mathematics course work and states' high school graduation requirements and assessment or accountability policies. We found that students in states with more graduation requirements tended to enroll in higher level mathematics courses as freshmen and persist to take more advanced level courses. Similar trends were also found for students in states that link test performance to consequences for schools. Extensive testing, however, had little effect on course taking except to increase differences based on socioeconomic status. In contrast, differences between racial or ethnic groups tended to be smaller in states where test performance was linked to consequences for students.