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.

I opened this blog series yesterday with comments about how Kentucky’s official high school graduation rates compare to a more realistic appraisal of the proportion of those graduates who actually got an effective education, one that made them either college or career ready. This discussion makes it clear that Kentucky continued to hand out a lot of rather empty diplomas in 2016.

Today, I add more 2016-based evidence from a different sort of analysis based on the fact that Kentucky regulation 704 KAR 3:305, “Minimum requirements for high school graduation,” specifically requires all graduates to have competency in math through Algebra II.

This blog looks at the discrepancies between each district’s officially reported Four-Year Adjusted Cohort High School Graduation Rate for 2016 (ACGR) for all students and the district’s proficiency rate for all students during Algebra II End-of-Course Exams (EOC) in the 2014-15 school year.

As you will see, again in 2016 – just as we found in the 2015 data – the regulatory requirement for Algebra II mostly seems to get just a wink and a nod in many of Kentucky’s public school districts. Thus, the case that Kentucky’s high school diploma needs some serious quality control is strengthened by this alternate analysis.

As we did in our Part 1 blog about the readiness implications for diploma quality, today we discuss the top 10 and bottom 10 districts ranked in our full Excel spreadsheet.

We use the Algebra results from 2014-15, one school year earlier, for our comparison because Kentucky Department of Education staff indicate that most of our students take Algebra II in the 11th grade.

Now, check out the table below. If you are a parent or an employer, you want your local school system to rank low on this table, below the yellow background divider bar. School districts listed near the top raise the most questions about diploma quality.

For example, the top-listed district for the worst performance, Owsley County, had an officially reported “on time” Four-Year Adjusted Cohort High School Graduation Rate (ACGR) of 93.1 percent in 2016. That looks really great until you check the Algebra II proficiency rate in the district, which was only 7.0 percent in 2014-15.Clearly, there is a huge credibility gap between the reported graduation rate for Owsley County and an important indicator of what the real competency level in a required graduation subject – Algebra II – actually is.

While a case might be made that not every student needs to pass the final exam to qualify as competent in Algebra II, the fact is that other districts such as those shown in the bottom half of the table clearly get the graduation rate to Algebra II proficiency rate a lot better than the 86.1 point gap found in Owsley.

The other end of the table also raises some concerns about Algebra II competency. Even top performing districts like Beechwood Independent and Fort Thomas Independent still have double-digit differences between their Algebra II proficiency rates and their graduation rates.

So, the question must be asked: If Algebra II really is supposed to be a graduation requirement, why do we find very high graduation rates in most Kentucky school districts when their Algebra II End-of-Course proficiency rates are so much lower? Is there something wrong with the Algebra II exam? Considering that this test comes from the highly respected ACT, Inc., that seems unlikely. Or, are schools just ignoring the Algebra II requirement so they can make their graduation counts look good?

In closing, the graduation rate/Algebra II analysis for 2016 provides another very problematic indication of serious quality control problems with Kentucky’s high school diplomas. Making kids feel good with a piece of paper when they will soon discover themselves in remedial courses in college or unable to land a good job in business and industry does no one outside of adults running under-performing school systems much good.

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?

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