Failing grade

The number of Texans who don’t have a high school-level education is unacceptable.

Here’s a troublesome statistic for a state that once took great pride in its education system. About 1 in 6 adults in Texas doesn’t have a high school diploma.

That amounts to roughly 3 million working-age people in our state who never finished high school. The Center for Public Policy Priorities crunched the data and concluded that Texas and California fall in last place in the percentage of people over 25 who don’t have a high school level education.

Our state has a growing population whose economic opportunities would be immeasurably improved by a single piece of paper. For generations, the General Equivalency Diploma was the main alternative to a high school sheepskin, but in the last couple of years the number of Texans taking the test has fallen off a cliff. At a time when employers in many fields are desperate to find qualified workers, officials on both the state and local levels need to figure out how to reverse that trend.

The GED test was developed during World War II to provide Americans who didn’t finish high school with a second chance to certify they had a basic level of education. The exam has been periodically updated during the ensuing decades. A version that was introduced in 2014 caused the number of people passing the test to collapse, dropping 85 percent in a single year. The test might have become harder, but it’s pretty clear much of the problem was that the exam was administered on computers instead of paper. As a result, a couple of competitors introduced alternative exams.

So students in our state can now choose between three different tests to obtain a Texas Certificate of High School Equivalency. Nonetheless, the plunge in the number of Texans earning those certificates is staggering. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of test takers dropped 42 percent, and the number of people who passed fell 73 percent.

Networks of adult education programs like community colleges serve Texans who don’t have high school credentials, but it’s clear they’ve got to do better. The Legislature can help out in a number of ways. It can expand programs like Accelerate Texas, which enrolls students in both exam prep courses and workforce training classes. Lawmakers also need to establish a system of tracking students who earn high school certifications, not only to determine which training programs are most effective but also to help decide whether the state really needs three different high school equivalency exams.

The private sector also plays a significant role. Employers can provide valuable assistance to workers who want to earn high school certification, like paid time off or underwriting the cost of test preparation and exam fees. Some companies also award grants to adult education programs.

The stakes here are huge. During the recession that started with the economic crisis of 2008, it’s estimated that more than 5 million jobs requiring only a high school diploma were lost; by 2016, only 80,000 of those jobs had returned. Workers without high school educations who are lucky enough to find jobs have a median annual income of $21,362, researchers say, while people with diplomas or certifications earn around $28,000.

We Texans like to brag, but we should be ashamed at the number of people in our state who still don’t have a high school level education. Leaving 18 percent of the state’s workforce behind is unacceptable. Texas needs to do whatever is necessary to ensure that more students take — and pass — one of the exams that opens the door to a high school certification.