States Need to Change School Accountability to Boost Graduation Rates, Students’ College and Career Readiness

Those are the key recommendations of two major reports released today by the nonprofit SREB. The reports call for states to give the same weight to high school graduation rates as they do to student achievement under school accountability policies.

The first new SREB report, The Next Generation of School Accountability: A Blueprint for Raising High School Graduation Rates and Achievement in SREB States, outlines how states can make the improvement of high school graduation rates a central focus of school accountability. The report comes as many states are beginning to revise their existing laws, even before the federal No Child Left Behind Act is reauthorized or changed by Congress.

Beyond urging improvements on graduation rates, the Next Generation report also calls for accountability policies to push for student achievement that goes beyond minimum expectations and extends to students’ readiness for college and careers. States need to hold schools accountable for improving over time the percentages of high school graduates who meet higher achievement goals than those required by minimum-level high school exams in many states. All states need graduates who are better prepared for college and advanced career training.

The second new SREB report, Gaining Ground on High School Graduation Rates in SREB States: Milestones and Guideposts, provides an in-depth update of states’ graduation rates for all groups of students and details how states must begin using a new federal rate by 2011. The SREB median states graduated about 72 percent of students on time, compared with 73 percent average in the nation, according to the federal government’s averaged freshman graduation rate (AFGR) for 2006, the report shows. Both new reports are available at www.sreb.org.

Thirteen of the 16 SREB states have seen gains in high school graduation rates since 2002, based on the AFGR, the Gaining Ground report shows. This is a very a different situation in most SREB states than in 2005, when a major SREB report showed that most states’ graduation rates were low and dropping. Even as many states saw gains, graduation rates for the nation and region have returned only to early 1990s levels.

Tennessee had the nation’s largest graduation-rate gain, rising by 11 percentage points from 2002 to 2006, based on the AFGR. Still, like many SREB states, Tennessee’s 71 percent graduation rate remains too low and is slightly below the national average. The overall gain for the SREB median states returns the region to the same graduation rate levels they had in the 1990s.

Many states still have not set high goals for improving graduation rates statewide or for individual schools and districts, in some cases allowing schools to take decades to meet graduation rate goals under NCLB, the Next Generation report explains.

"State leaders are united in calling for more improvements in high school graduation rates, and helping schools meet higher school-by-school goals for helping more students graduate," SREB President Dave Spence said. "States also need to ensure that more high school graduates are ready for college, advanced career training or work."

The new reports were presented to state leaders at SREB’s 58th Annual Legislative Work Conference earlier this month in San Antonio, Texas. The annual gathering brings together state legislators to hear from experts on improving education, to discuss a variety of related topics, and to connect with one another on policy ideas in a nonpolitical environment.

The Next Generation report emerged after a distinguished panel of state leaders, led by Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia (who formerly chaired SREB), began discussing how states might revise school accountability laws to make more progress on both student achievement and graduation rates. Leaders in SREB states expressed strong interest in setting the pace for the rest of the nation in boosting high school graduation rates and students’ college and career readiness.

The Next Generation report calls for states to set statewide graduation rate goals of 90 percent, to provide additional help for schools in meeting more ambitious goals, and for holding schools accountable for gains. It also calls for higher-quality career/technical education programs that infuse more rigorous academics into career courses and help students find more meaning in high school.

The report also calls for states to bring dropouts back into the education system by inviting them back into traditional schools and providing online courses and improved flexible-schedule diploma or GED-credential programs. Middle grades schools also need much attention, so that students are better prepared when they enter high school.

Seven of the 16 SREB states beat the national graduation rate of 73 percent in 2006, according to the AFGR, the Gaining Ground report shows: Arkansas at 80 percent, Delaware at 76 percent, Kentucky at 77 percent, Maryland at 80 percent, Oklahoma at 78 percent, Virginia at 75 percent, and West Virginia at 77 percent.

States that do not have high-stakes graduation tests usually have higher graduation rates, and states that do have high-stakes tests need to provide substantial help for struggling students so that more of them can graduate ready to continue their learning, the Next Generation report notes.

Black and Hispanic students generally have lower graduation rates than white students — even as the proportions of minority students continue to grow dramatically in most SREB states. SREB states beat the national graduation rates for black and Hispanic students on the AFGR in 2006, but they lagged behind the national rate for white students.

While higher percentages of black students than in the nation graduated on time in nine SREB states in 2006, only about half of black students graduated in Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. Eleven SREB states had higher on-time rates for Hispanic students than the nation in 2006, but only about half of these students graduated on time in Georgia that year, the report shows.

In addition to Tennessee’s major gains, the AFGR in Delaware and Kentucky rose by 7 percentage points from 2002 to 2006, Arkansas was up by 5 points, and Alabama and North Carolina by 4 points. The national gain during the period was 0.4 percent.

Both reports also show that SREB states have a larger proportion of so-called "dropout factories," or schools in which fewer than 60 percent of freshmen are seniors four years later. States need to target these schools for special help and reform, especially South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, which have relatively high percentages of these schools.

The Gaining Ground report also shows in which grades states see the most dropouts. Enrollment swells in the ninth grade in most states because too many freshmen fail their courses and are not promoted to 10th grade. In the SREB median states, the ninth-grade enrollment bulge was 14 percent in 2006. But eight SREB states — Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia — had lower-than-average ninth-grade enrollment bulges compared with the nation’s 13 percent. The region’s largest ninth-grade enrollment bulges were in Texas (20 percent), Georgia (19 percent), Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina (the last three at 17 percent).

Five SREB states had higher "promoting power" — the percentage of ninth-graders who are promoted to the 10th grade on time — than the national rate of 78 percent: Arkansas, Maryland, Oklahoma, Virginia and West Virginia. Florida (63 percent) and Louisiana (64 percent) had the region’s lowest promotion rates. The SREB median states were at 70 percent.

Twelve of the 16 SREB states had higher seniors-to-graduate ratios than the nation in 2006, indicating the percentage of seniors who graduate on time. Arkansas and Kentucky were highest at 98 percent each. The SREB median states at 91 percent beat the national 88 percent rate. Georgia and Florida were the region’s lowest on this measure. The seniors-to-graduate ration and promoting power indicators were developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and are cited in the Gaining Ground report.

A New Generation of School Accountability

The Next Generation report recommends that state school accountability systems include these 10 key principles:

1. Give equal weight to graduation and achievement in determining school performance.
2. Set ambitious goals for improving graduation rates.
3. Set high school achievement goals beyond minimum competency and hold schools accountable for significant annual improvement in helping higher percentages of students meet them.
4. Stress improvement, provide rewards and assistance for districts and schools to make expected progress, and focus sanctions on districts and schools that fail to improve even after receiving state assistance.
5. Strengthen middle grades students’ transition into high school and reduce ninth-grade failure rates.
6. Recognize that one path to graduation does not fit all students.
7. Broaden the definition of academic rigor to include career/technical programs of study that join a solid academic core with a coherent sequence of quality CT courses.
8. Bring dropouts back into the education system.
9. Target schools with the lowest achievement levels and graduation rates for major improvements.
10. Make better use of the senior year to prepare students for graduation and give students a jump-start on college and careers.

For more information or to speak with SREB researchers on your state’s progress on the recommended changes in state school accountability policies, contact SREB Communications.

The Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB, based in Atlanta, was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More information is available online at www.sreb.org.