Policymakers should boost high school diploma’s value

THE simple reality is that an Oklahoma high school diploma doesn’t hold enough value. Lawmakers appear ready to dilute it even further. To obtain a high school diploma, Oklahoma students must pass four of seven end-of-instruction exams in Algebra I, Algebra II, English II, English III, Biology I, Geometry and U.S. History. A measure now being touted, House Bill 1622, would eliminate those tests along with several others. The arguments for making this change ignore the true problems associated with a devalued diploma.

Rep. Michael Rogers, a Broken Arrow Republican who is a former principal, offers a common complaint when he says, “Colleges don’t measure those tests when they are reviewing applicants …”

Yet colleges do care if you obtained a high school diploma, which students don’t get if they can’t pass EOI tests. So the tests do impact college admissions, indirectly.

But more importantly, colleges don’t put much value in students’ grades, which would be the measurement left in place if graduation exams are repealed.

In 2013, USA Today reported that admissions officers at selective colleges “say they barely look at an applicant’s GPA.”

“It’s meaningless,” Greg Roberts, admissions dean at the University of Virginia, told USA Today. Jim Bock, admissions dean at Swarthmore College, bluntly declared, “It’s artificial.”

A 2011 survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling found that college admission officials put more emphasis on ACT and SAT scores than on an applicant’s grades in all high school courses (although grades in specific college preparatory courses were a different story).

In other words, the results of one standardized test taken on one day counted for more than four years’ worth of high school grades. And when officials did consider student GPAs, the NACAC found that more than half of colleges must recalculate applicants’ GPAs to standardize them because of the different grading scales used by high schools.

The reality of grade inflation is undeniable. From 1990 to 2009, high school graduates’ mean GPA increased even as ACT and SAT scores remained the same. In 2013, about 39 percent of incoming freshmen at Oklahoma colleges had to take at least one remedial class, which means they retook high school courses in college. Oklahoma Watch reported that was “the highest rate in the country …”

EOI tests were instituted to guard against grade inflation and demonstrate that Oklahoma high school graduates possessed at least a minimal mastery of high school coursework. Yet the tests have been criticized for being too easy.

Instead of throwing up their hands, lawmakers should seek to improve the system. Why not increase the rigor of Oklahoma’s graduation exams to the point that they have value for college admissions?

Along the same track, other bills winding through the Legislature would replace EOIs with ACT products — but not the ACT test used for college admission. Instead, schools could use other tests offered by the same company. So that effort would replace EOI tests that college admission officials ignore with ACT-branded tests that college admission officials also ignore. That’s of little benefit.

If lawmakers want an Oklahoma high school diploma to have real value to its holder, they should focus on implementing rigorous, credible graduation exams. Proposals that don’t achieve that goal only lower already-low expectations in Oklahoma schools.