THANKS, W!:

One of the greatest apparent achievements in U.S. education in the past two decades century has been the steep rise of the U.S. high school graduation rate. For decades, the percentage of 18-24 year-olds who completed high school with a regular diploma or GED hovered around 85%. Since 2001, however, there has been a sharp increase, arguably the fastest rise since the early 1900s. Between 2001 and 2016, the percentage of 18-24 year-olds with a credential increased to 93%--an 8-percentage-point increase.  [...]

The uptick started in the early 2000s, just after No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed into law. In addition to the law's well-known focus on test scores, NCLB also gradually added accountability for high school graduation. At first, the attention to graduation was relatively limited, but, in 2007, states were required to set specific targets that schools had to reach in order to make "adequate yearly progress" and use a common metric, called the average cohort graduation rate. The pressure was on to raise graduation rates. [...]

While we need to work to improve the data, we can also swing too far in the other direction--and too-easily dismiss the measures we have now. Yes, there are many ways to manipulate high school graduation measures, and some of this did occur. But, even in the worst-case scenarios laid out here, the evidence suggests that the accountability helped increase the national high school graduation rate--and produced some real and important knowledge and skills for students. Given the value of high school degrees generally, this is a great accomplishment.

At a time when the past two decades of accountability reforms are increasingly seen as a failure, our analysis suggests that graduation accountability has been a meaningful success story.

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