There was lots of news about high stakes, high school graduation exams seven or eight years ago when many states were instituting such graduation requirements, but while you hear less about these tests today, according to Education Week, 24 states continue to require them. These are the tests that students must pass to earn a high school diploma, even though they may have passed all of the required classes.
This week the Hechinger Report, a news service from Teachers College at Columbia University, profiles a young Mississippi woman who passed all of her high school courses and three out of four high school exit exams. When she failed the reading exam for the fifth time right before graduation, her school offered her the chance to accept what Mississippi calls an “occupational diploma,” a lesser document that tells an institute of higher learning or a potential employer that the young adult has not qualified for a regular high school diploma.
According to the Hechinger Report, in Mississippi, “Alternate diploma students face high unemployment rates. In the year after high school graduation, alternate diploma students have nearly triple the unemployment rate of high school graduates.” While 7 of Mississippi’s 15 community colleges accept students with an occupational diploma, no four year college or university accepts the alternative credential. The young woman profiled by the Hechinger Report seemed to be thriving in a post-high school occupational program training her to be a medical technician until the school discovered that she carried only an occupational diploma from her high school, refunded her tuition, and asked her to leave.
The standards and accountability movement in education with the accompanying high stakes tests are said to protect society from the under-prepared. In the states that continue to condition high school graduation on high stakes tests, the message is that the quality of the diploma is what counts, as though that piece of paper is really some kind of guarantee for an employer of the future performance of the young adult coming out of school.
What if we found a way to value the student instead of the quality of the credential that student carries? And anyway, what happened to the idea of a second chance? UCLA professor and education writer Mike Rose continues to lift up the importance of public schools and community colleges as places where it is possible to open opportunity for those society seems satisfied to throw away: “The intersection of a reductive, technocratic orientation with the aura of deficiency that surrounds the poor not only dehumanizes our public institutions but makes them less effective. To have a prayer of achieving a society that realizes the potential of all its citizens, we will need institutions that affirm the full humanity, the wide sweep of desire and ability of the people walking through the door.” (Why School?, 2014 Edition, p. 199)
What if we honored the experience of the students who have passed all of their high school classes with the diploma they have earned through that experience? What if we decided to fund public schools adequately to hire enough counselors to help even struggling students become aware of the possible paths after high school?
Our public schools educate a wide range of students, all with abilities and gifts they can contribute to the well-being of our communities just as they earn enough to help support their families. Does it help students if we create exams that highlight their areas of weakness and in many cases ensure they will be unemployed?
janresseger 
There is no doubt whatsoever that Gates’ “backdooring” push toward his charter school agenda is reprehensible, but at the same time the last several decades has seen the validity of h.s. graduation erode via ‘social promotion’& ‘grade inflation,’ often two sides to the same coin. This slippage has reared its ugly head into post-secondary education with grades 13 & 14 commonly replacing time-honored designations like Freshman and Sophomore. Certainly reinstating Counselor-positions along with Assistant Principals and Nurses from the ranks of eliminated positions in budget-balancing tricks would be welcome classroom relief, but the overall problem is multi-faceted and acute. Giving more and more classroom credit for ‘life-experience’ must be stopped, as overall academic erosion needs our full attention. We hardly need ‘technological advances’ with which to contend for poor-and-disadvantaged minorities to be victimized further. There is more than enough for federal, state and local participation in a frontal attack to these problems, or good-ol’ Bill Gates will have strapped us all. Even Warren Buffett has given over control of his billions earmarked for education reform to good-ol’ Bill since Buffett saw such a good job being done that he need not compete but instead arm Gates’ with even deeper pockets. This last feature makes me feel defeated until some hero comes along to change the balance of money, which we poor turks neither have nor have access to. Yes, the problem is this acute!