Running out of time

America’s high schools face a growing crisis: Millions of students who entered ninth grade in the fall of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, are set to graduate this spring, with little hope of recovering from the learning loss incurred while schools were shut. They’re running out of time.

Since the start of the pandemic, the academic performance of high school students has been abysmal. In 2022, average scores on the ACT exam were the lowest in 30 years; this year’s results were even worse.

Absent alternatives, these students will leave school unprepared for either college or the workforce, greatly increasing their risks of unemployment, poverty, depression and even early death.

Preventing irreversible damage for older students will require a tougher approach. High schools should start by being candid with parents about where their kids stand and the work necessary to meet end-of-year benchmarks. They should make clear that chronic absences—which have soared since the pandemic, most acutely among high schoolers—will affect students’ ability to graduate on time. States should push districts to require that, at a minimum, graduating seniors be tested on their proficiency in core subjects to receive a diploma.

Better to give current seniors the option of spending a post-graduation gap year completing high school coursework while taking introductory college classes or starting apprenticeships with local employers.

Extending free education beyond 12th grade won’t be cheap, yet as much as $90 billion in federal pandemic aid to schools remains unspent. The most urgent priority is to use those funds to help high school students recover what they’ve lost, before it’s too late.