Hold High Schools and Colleges Accountable

The mission of high schools is to prepare all students for success in college, careers and citizenship. Yet, in most states, high schools are rarely held accountable for ensuring that students achieve these goals as they are defined today.

Colleges, meanwhile, have few incentives to improve college retention and completion rates. With the number of jobs requiring at least some education beyond high school expanding rapidly, states must work closely with higher education systems to introduce more effective strategies to ensure that the students they admit actually graduate with a degree and a productive set of skills and knowledge.

To upgrade high school and college accountability systems, states must strengthen their data and information systems. Few states currently can gauge how well high schools prepare students for college and the workplace. Longitudinal data systems should follow individual students from grade to grade and school to school, all the way from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary education ("P-16") and the workplace. That way, they can trace student success (or failure) back to their high school experience and use the information to strengthen the experience for the next class of students. These systems also will provide more accurate and consistent measures of dropout and graduation rates. States need "unique student identifiers" in order to build these systems.

Building High-Quality Data Systems

There has been significant progress in the number of states that have committed to building P–20 longitudinal data systems. However, the process is long and complex. So far, only Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming already have a data system with unique student identifiers that follow students from pre-kindergarten through the postsecondary level in place, with another 38 states planning to develop such a system.

Florida, which has long had the nation’s most robust data system, can even track student progress into employment. This allows the state and its schools to answer a variety of questions about the impact of students’ K-12 education on their future success.

Once the states have high-quality data, they then need to use that information to hold high schools accountable not only for their high school graduation rates but also for whether those graduates are college- and career-ready; whether they go on to college; and whether they are placed into credit-bearing, non-remedial courses in college.

College- and Career-Ready High School Accountability Systems

State high school accountability systems that measure college- and career-readiness should take into account key indicators, including, at a minimum:

• An accurate graduation rate;
  
• Percentage of students completing a college- and career-ready curriculum;
• Percentage of students reaching a statewide college - and career-ready cut score on a high school assessment;
• Percentage of students placed into credit-bearing, non-remedial courses in reading, writing and/or mathematics upon entry into college.

To date, nearly one-third of the states factor one or two of these indicators of college and career readiness into their high school accountability systems, but none factor all four. As the next generation of school accountability takes shape, it is becoming increasingly clear that most states do not base their accountability systems around the preparation of graduates for postsecondary success and will need to rethink the way they hold high school accountable. For states to implement effective accountability systems that hold schools accountable for preparing all students for college  and careers, they will need to invest more time and resources into developing better assessments and more sophisticated data systems. In addition, K-12 and higher education systems must come together to share information and align their respective accountability systems and goals.

All Students Should Graduate, and All Should Graduate College- and Career-Ready

As states continue to struggle with their high school accountability models, there are a few states - Louisiana, New York, North Carolina and Texas - that do include an accurate cohort graduation rate and an indicator of whether students are earning a college- and career-ready diploma. 

Trying to correct the fact that schools often score higher on test-driven accountability ratings when they push low-performing students out, Louisiana recently adopted a new accountability system that holds high schools accountable for both dropout rates and student achievement on the state assessments. Each student outcome — from dropping out to graduating with academic or career/technical endorsement — is worth a certain amount of points on the “graduation index” that goes into a school’s  accountability rating. The system also encourages schools to continue working with students who fail to graduate within four years. If a student upgrades his or her “outcome” after four years, the school’s accountability rating will reflect that increase in a student’s status.