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Alabama’s high school seniors may have one more box to check before they graduate.
The state Board of Education is considering a requirement that every Alabama public school student prove they are ready for college or a career by graduation day.
“We have a lot of students that check multiple boxes,” Alabama State Superintendent Eric Mackey told board members during a recent work session. “The problem is we have students who don’t check any of the nine boxes.”
“We think our graduates ought to check at least one of these nine boxes.”
Those boxes, measures of college or career readiness, are:
- A qualifying score on an Advanced Placement exam,
- A qualifying score on an International Baccalaureate exam,
- A benchmark score on the ACT college entrance exam,
- Earning college credit while in high school,
- Acceptance into a branch of the military prior to graduation,
- A qualifying score on the ACT WorkKeys test,
- A career tech credential,
- A qualifying youth apprenticeship, or
- Attaining career and technical education completer status.
“We’ve really not done a major overview of high school graduation requirements since the 90s,” Mackey said. “There’s been some tinkering with it, but there’s not been a major overhaul.”
The new requirement would become effective for next year’s ninth graders. The first graduating class that would have to meet the requirement is the class of 2028.
The change signals the board’s shift back to attaching an academic requirement to the Alabama high school diploma. The state dropped the high school graduation exam in 2014 citing it as an unnecessary barrier for some students.
Read more: What does it take to earn an Alabama high school diploma?
Critics at the time said Alabama’s high school diploma lost value when the only requirement to graduate was to get passing grades.
Just prior to dropping the graduation exam, the state adopted seven different types of accomplishments–called college and career readiness (CCR) indicators–that would serve as evidence that students had what it took to head to college or start their career, but they didn’t make it a graduation requirement at the time.
Education officials noticed pretty quickly that not all graduates were checking one of the then-seven boxes showing they were college or career ready. In 2016, 87% of students graduated on time, but only 66% earned a CCR indicator, a difference of 21 percentage points.
By 2018, the gap shrunk to 11 percentage points (90% graduated, 79% earned a CCR indicator), but the gap grew again during the pandemic years.
In the class of 2021, 92% of students graduated, but only 76% earned a CCR indicator–a gap of 16 percentage points.
In some high schools, the gap between the graduation rate and the CCR rate was as wide as 50 percentage points.
The change could leave some students needing to find room in their schedule to earn one of the indicators.
The requirement might be tough for student-athletes, Mackey said, because student-athletes may have little room in their schedule for coursework that would fulfill the new requirement.
But with 5 ½ credits (one credit equals two semesters) available to take as electives, with some restrictions, Mackey said the CCR requirement is doable.
Read more: Are Alabama’s high school graduates ready for the next step?
Read more: Alabama schools chief wants $799 million more in funding for counselors, nurses, principals
Mackey told board members he is concerned about students in schools that may not have the full array of opportunities to earn an indicator. The state will work to improve those opportunities, he said, in the years leading up to the requirement taking effect.
High school juniors take the ACT college entrance exam, and seniors take the WorkKeys, which tests how well students can apply what they’ve learned in school to the workplace. The WorkKeys is geared toward students intending to begin work after graduating.
Mackey noted some schools–those where graduates are believed to be heading for college–choose not to give the WorkKeys test, but more than 95% of schools do give the test.
Not all schools offer two of the test-based options–Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses–he said, and opportunities for dual enrollment, typically in a two-year college, depend on the relationships between the school and the college.
Career and technical education opportunities are also unequal, he said, with some districts operating their own career tech center and others sharing a regional center that serves multiple districts. Travel time to those regional centers can eat up instruction time, he said, which can be another barrier for student-athletes to participate.
“We’ve got the accountability for schools now, because of the report card,” he said, “but this puts more accountability on graduates than we’ve had since the graduation exam, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think we have to hold our graduates accountable. They need to be responsible for their academic achievement.”
The board will begin the adoption process at the September board meeting, which will open a 45-day public comment period. The final vote will take place at the November board meeting.
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