Education Next – Matthew M. Chingos and Kristin Blagg
“With graduation rates at an all-time high, three million students will graduate from U.S. public high schools this spring. But federal achievement data indicate that these students likely have no better math or reading skills than their parents did. Commentators often try to explain away this troubling trend as an artifact of changing student populations, flaws in test design, or declining student effort on low-stakes tests. But a new analysis suggests that stagnant high school achievement is a real phenomenon that warrants increased attention…In a new Urban Institute report, we examine four hypotheses for why achievement gains fade out by the end of high school. In short, we find little evidence to support any of them…For too long, the academic performance of the nation’s high school students has been overlooked or explained away…That needs to change. All of the available data provide a wake-up call for researchers and policymakers to renew their commitment to high school students and ensure that the academic gains that elementary and middle schools have produced are not squandered.”(more)