I’ve been writing about obvious quality control problems with the award of high school diplomas in Kentucky for several years. Now, I am updating that work with results from the 2016 Unbridled Learning reports, and the situation remains very serious.

Quite simply, there continues to be extensive evidence that Kentucky schools are handing out a lot of diplomas to students who cannot meet any of the official College and/or Career Ready (CCR) criteria and who probably don’t meet the state’s regulatory requirement that graduates are to be competent in math through Algebra II.

Even worse, the quality control in diploma awards varies widely by school district in Kentucky. For example, in the worst example from the new, 2016 CCR-based analysis, one school district officially reported an “on time” high school graduation rate of 91.7 percent although little more than one in four of that district’s 2016 graduates could pass muster under at least one of the official CCR criteria. The rest apparently got a somewhat hollow diploma that didn’t meet the state’s promise that our graduates will be ready for college and/or a career.

Background

Concerns about quality control in Kentucky’s high school diplomas aren’t new. As early as 2012 BIPPS raised some specific concerns that control over who was getting a diploma might be weakening, pointing out that non-readers were getting regular Kentucky high school diplomas.

By September of 2015 we had greatly expanded research into the diploma quality control problem, citing results from a new calculation we called the “Effective High School Graduation Rate.”

Those comments in September 2015 were based on 2014 graduation rate results for Kentucky. They pointed to a disturbing set of evidence that while the official graduation rates were rather high, many of those diploma recipients were unable to meet any of the state’s official College and/or Career Ready (CCR) criteria.

Several months ago, I published a four-part series of blogs with expanded evidence of the state’s problems with social promotion to diplomas.

• More on the quality control problems with Kentucky’s high school diplomas – Part 1

• More on the quality control problems with Kentucky’s high school diplomas – Part 2

• More on the quality control problems with Kentucky’s high school diplomas – Part 3

• More on the quality control problems with Kentucky’s high school diplomas – Part 4

The new blogs use two separate approaches that look at 2015 data. One approach repeated the earlier analysis with the CCR rates. A new, second approach considered the requirement in Kentucky regulation 704 KAR 3:305, “Minimum requirements for high school graduation,” that Kentucky high school graduates must be “competent” in math through Algebra II.

Those discussions were based on 2015 Unbridled Learning results.

The new results for 2016

Now, let’s see what happened in the new 2016 Unbridled Learning results. Once again, we are going to show you some very problematic evidence that high school diplomas need some serious quality control in Kentucky.

The table below shows the very worst (at the top) and very best (at the bottom) performances by school district for the percentages of diplomas being handed out versus the percentages of students who really get an effective education – at least using the state’s official college and/or career ready criteria. Very simply, you want your school district to rank at the very bottom of this table.

Again, those 10 districts with the worst performance are at the top of the table, above the yellow background dividing line. The best 10 performers among Kentucky’s 168 districts that have high schools are found at the bottom of the listing. If your district isn’t listed, click here.

Let’s discuss this top-ten-bottom-ten table in more detail.

The first column shows each district’s officially reported 4-Year Adjusted Cohort High School Graduation Rate (ACGR) for 2016 graduates. This statistic reports the percentage of first time entering ninth grade students who graduate after four years of high school with a standard diploma – an “on time” graduation rate. Each student is individually tracked all the way through high school to compute this figure. It is “adjusted” to correct for students who move in and out of each school in upper high school grades.

The next column shows the officially reported College and/or Career Ready (CCR) rate for the district at the end of the same school term (2015-16). This statistic shows the percentage of the 2016 graduates who were able to meet at least one of the formal readiness criteria established by the Kentucky Board of Education and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education.

As a side note, there is evidence from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability that these official CCR rates are too optimistic, but that just makes our case even stronger.

Other columns report our calculation of the Effective High School Graduation Rate and the difference between the official 4-Year ACGR and the Effective High School Graduation Rate.

To expand your understanding, consider the most problematic, top listed district – Silver Grove Independent.

Silver Grove officially posted an on-time Four-Year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate of 91.7 percent in 2016. That means that out of every 100 entering ninth graders in 2012-13, 91.7 students graduated on time. However, only a dismal 27.3 percent of those 91.7 graduates were able to meet any of the various criteria for college or career readiness.

Do the math, and only about 25 students from each 100 initial ninth grade students actually graduated after four years of school with an effective education – namely, a good enough education to meet at least one of the official CCR criteria. So, out of the original 100 ninth graders, only 25 got an effective education after four years of high school. Thus, the Effective High School Graduation Rate for Silver Grove in 2016 was only 25.0 percent.

In other words, just 25.0 percent of the entering cohort of ninth graders at Silver Grove in the 2012-13 school year who should have graduated on time in 2016 actually got both a diploma and an effective education after four years of high school.

Continuing across in our table, the difference between Silver Grove’s official AFGR and its Effective High School Graduation Rate is 66.7 percentage points. That represents a very wide divide between those who got a piece of paper and the far fewer number that got an effective education.

Note: Recall again our earlier comment that OEA research indicates the actual CCR rates are too high. That makes it likely that Silver Grove’s true Effective High School Graduation Rate would be even lower if more accurate CCR criteria were available. However, our case for concern obviously is well-established even by applying the current official CCR information.

We ranked all the districts on the numbers in the difference column, and Silver Grove came out ranking number one with the worst gap of all.

However, Silver Grove is far from alone.

Now, take a look at the bottom of the table. We only have to move up seven places from the bottom of the list (where we find the best performance for our CCR analysis) before we encounter a double-digit difference between the official graduation rate and the Effective High School Graduation Rate. If readiness for college or a career really is supposed to be the goal behind public education, then almost all of Kentucky’s school districts are handing out an excessive number of high school diplomas that are not backed by such readiness.

So, the 2016 data again makes it clear that Kentucky has some very serious quality control problems with what it really takes to get a high school diploma in the Bluegrass State.

By the way, among other things, this makes recent claims from Johns Hopkins University that Kentucky leads the nation for graduation rates for low-income students highly debatable. In fact, what the data cited in Hopkins’ report really might show is that Kentucky is a national leader for social promotion to a diploma. This quite reasonable alternate interpretation of the data apparently never crossed the minds of the Hopkins research team.

One last note: the Bluegrass Institute is far from alone with our concerns in this area. At the Kentucky Board of Education’s retreat meeting on August 3, 2016, some of these problems were pointed out by Kentucky Department of Education Associate Commissioner Rhonda Simms and board member Gary Houchens. A bit later in the meeting, board chair Roger Marcum, said:

“I’m concerned with what Gary raised earlier and that is the consistency with our graduation rate and the CCR, and even more than that, about students receiving a diploma and whether or not there is any value.”

An audio recording of that meeting is available, and you can hear Marcum’s concerns about diploma quality beginning at 2 hours, 13 minutes and 27 seconds into the recording.

Marcum is right to be concerned, and all Kentuckians should share those concerns with him. Handing out Hollow Diplomas does no one much good except for school people who want to hide low performance. For parents, business and industry, and most importantly the students, a Hollow Diploma arguably does more harm than good. Having a piece of paper no one trusts is one problem. But, in this economy lacking the education that paper is supposed to represent is deadly.

Some other references regarding quality control in Kentucky’s high school diplomas

Kentucky’s Effective High School Graduation Rate

Bluegrass Beacon: Social promotion enabled by watered-down diplomas

News release: The uneven quality of Kentucky’s high school diplomasIs Kentucky handing out ‘hollow’ diplomas?