Despite being an avid watcher of the K-12 sector and its various internecine dramas, I confess I did not have “high-school diplomas” on my bingo card of likely 2024 controversies. The topic inspires excitement like peeling potatoes. Nonetheless, earlier this year, Indiana proposed changes to the state’s high-school-diploma requirements, and the response was apoplectic.
The state board of education recommended two separate tracks that emphasize either traditional academic requirements or career experience and work hours. A public-comment portal received 8,000 submissions. Meanwhile, the state board sat through a “marathon public comment session” of parent, student, and teacher complaints. Even Purdue University joined the fracas, publishing an open letter that called the proposed changes a “disaster for students.”
Indiana’s changes respond to political trends that have undercut the one-size-fits-all educational model.Collectively, criticisms focused on two main tension points: Excessive work requirements on the career track would shoulder out advanced coursework, and changes to base diploma standards amounted to a state-wide lowering of expectations.
Much of the criticism and concern was quite valid. It’s all well and good to value career and technical education, but policy changes involve tradeoffs. Given the constraints of an academic calendar and the school days within it, students can complete only so many classes in their high-school careers. What are we willing to sacrifice for more work-for-credit opportunities? Algebra II? A semester of American history? Foreign language?
To its credit, the Indiana Department of Education took the criticisms to heart and overhauled its recommendations. A revised proposal creates three pathways directed towards enrollment in an institution of higher education, employment in a trade, or enlistment in the military. And each pathway has the potential for “plus tier” achievement, which is a fancy way to say a diploma with honors.
Despite the controversy, Indiana’s efforts are a worthwhile experiment. The changes come in response to two broader political trends that have undercut the one-size-fits-all educational model within which our school system has functioned for over a century.
First among these is widespread disillusionment with our higher-education system. A 2023 Gallup poll found that trust in higher education fell from 57 percent of Americans expressing confidence in our universities in 2015 to 36 percent doing so in 2023. Another survey of parents specifically found that almost half don’t want their children to attend a four-year college, even if finances aren’t a consideration.
For decades, a mantra of the left-affiliated education-reform movement was “college for all.” Progressive wish-list legislation is named after it. Many charter schools measure their success on the college enrollment of their students. Universities are the finish line.
The reasons for a subsequent disillusionment are many. The return on investment of increasingly expensive degrees and the opportunity cost of four years spent on campus, all for jobs that may or may not exist, have grown suspect. Political unrest and ideological capture have alienated anyone without a blue-dyed undercut. The degree itself has become a ticket for career advancement, creating arbitrary barriers of entry to the workforce for those without. Regardless of the reason, as the Wall Street Journal put it, many have “lost faith” in college.
The college degree has become a ticket for career advancement, creating arbitrary barriers of entry to the workforce.The second political trend is the increasing popularity of school-choice legislation. More and more families want something other than the white-painted-cinderblock, fluorescent-lit school experience that public education has to offer.
But even if school choice became the law of the land tomorrow, the current regulatory structure would limit the growth and variety of alternative schools. Licensing laws push the majority of teachers through university schools of education, where they imbibe a dubious brew of critical and progressive theories. Accrediting organizations require that all charter and private schools fit pre-ordained standards and policies. And a singular high-school diploma necessitates that all schools offer the same fare.
In such a context, that’s akin to offering a family the choice to eat at whatever restaurant they want, as long as every chef attended the same culinary school, each restaurant can build only on a pre-approved blueprint, and all menu items must be the same. It’s a choice in name only. In this context, arts schools, military schools, trade schools, religious schools, microschools, and other such options offer only slight differences, not true alternatives.
At root of both trends is a simple question: What’s the point of high school anyway? “To be prepared for life, career, and citizenship” is a pretty stock answer, but my colleague Checker Finn at the Fordham Institute points out the issues with such an answer:
“Well prepared for” doesn’t mean the same thing for young people headed from high school into, say, construction work, a plumbing apprenticeship, a chef’s job in a five-star restaurant, an open-to-all college, an Ivy League university, or the Air Force. How can a high school—or a state or district setting graduation requirements—possibly prepare thousands of dissimilar young people (who themselves arrive in high school with widely varied degrees of readiness, not to mention capacity and motivation) for the expectations and prerequisites of hundreds of differing post-graduation options?
Policy must ultimately alter as the desire for a diversity of high-school experiences and post-high-school pathways grows. If we collectively decide that we want to value the trades or direct employment as much as university enrollment, or if we collectively decide that a greater diversity of school structures is desirable, these sentiments must affect how we structure our educational system. Prime among those structures are the requirements for a degree.
Policy must ultimately alter as the desire for a diversity of high-school experiences and post-high-school pathways grows.Several other states are modifying their diplomas likewise. Massachusetts may abandon its renowned MCAS high-school exit exam, and Colorado may loosen SAT score requirements. On the flip side, Rhode Island recently adopted more stringent graduation requirements. Kansas modified its diploma, too.
Despite the controversy, Indiana’s reform is the most promising. Its three pathways with varied tiers can accommodate a variety of high-school models—let the arts schools skip over advanced courses to focus on classical ensembles if they so choose—that funnel students into a variety of postsecondary options.
And it’s only fitting that Indiana leads the way. Almost two decades ago, it led the college-for-all movement with its Core 40 high-school diploma, which legislation deemed a prerequisite for college enrollment in the state. Now, Hoosiers are diverting course and leading the way towards an alternative. It seems that “college for all” was ill-advised. And, without doubt, school choice is beneficial. Perhaps Indiana’s new diploma will fail, but it’s an experiment worth trying, and other states can learn from the state’s successes and failures.
Daniel Buck is an assistant principal at a classical charter school, a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, and the author of What Is Wrong with Our Schools?