# Presentation: 823543

## SHORING UP THE ACADEMIC PIPELINEFive Policies States Need to Improve Secondary and Postsecondary Success Rates

- Preparing America’s Future Regional High School Summit
- Cleveland, Ohio
- May 14-15, 2004

**Archived Information**

## The Governors’ Perspective

- State economic competitiveness
- More Governors see the need for broad college readiness
- Education is a pipeline
- Focus on places that are “leaking”
- States lose youth in high school, the college transition, and in college

**Notes:**
Hans has done an ample job laying out the problem, and I am sure you will here more about this throughout the next two days, but I want to start with a brief word about how my constituents, the Governors look at the issues of high school reform. 

First and foremost, Governors are their states’ economic development directors. Today, you will see more Governors than ever looking at education reform as a critical effort in building and maintaining state economic health.
The Governors’ perspective is supported by estimates of future economic growth support. More than 2/3 of workers in occupations or industries that are growing have at least some postsecondary education, compared with 1/3 of workers in occupations and industries that are declining. 67% of new jobs created by 2010 will demand skills that require at least some college. This trend in job creation is evident in every industry and occupation. High skilled-workers will not only fill jobs left by retiring baby boomers, but create new knowledge, companies and industries. 

Governors also recognize that preparation for college begins in preschool. That is why you see almost every governor calling for expansion of early childhood education. They also understand that quality teaching, aligned standards and curricula are important at every point of the pipeline. 

In an environment with constrained resources, Governors are focusing on the weak points of the pipeline. High dropout rates, low transition and completion rates for low-income youth are specific places where the pipeline is both ineffective and inefficient. After 20 years of education reform, the high school dropout rate is virtually unchanged, and a 30 percentage point gap still exists between high and low-income adults.  

A state policy framework (or check-list, if you will) should recognize this desire to focus resources and “shore up the pipeline.”

## The Ready for Tomorrow Check-List

- Set a stretch goal
- Develop and use one K-16 data system
- Align K-12 and higher education
- Promote a range of learning options
- Tackle low-performing high schools first

**Notes:**
Over the 2002-2003 period, NGA collaborated with NCSL, Achieve, and Jobs for the Future, consulted with national and state high school and higher education experts to develop a state policy framework, or 5-point check-list. This check-list is described in the NGA report, Ready for Tomorrow, which you can pick up on the resource table. This list is more than a set of recommendations about how to improve the institution of high schools but how to improve high school and college graduation rates, particularly for low-income, first generation youth.

## Does Your State Have a Goal?

- States need a numerical target for expanding high school and college completion rates.
- “Double the Numbers”
- The importance of raising expectations and sharing accountability for postsecondary success

**Notes:**
First, does your state have a goal. Until all segments of the education system–and the public–have high expectations and shared accountability for all students postsecondary success, it is unlikely that sufficient public and political will can be summoned to strengthen the education pipeline. 

A good starting point is a statewide, numerical target, disaggregated for subgroups currently underrepresented among postsecondary enrollees and completers. 

For examples, states can support a goal of doubling the number of young people who complete a recognized postsecondary credential and a reduction in the college attainment gap over the next ten years.  Michigan Governor Granholm and Iowa Governor Vilsack have already sent ambitious postsecondary attainment goals. 
Setting a numeric target helps raise the public’s expectations that now an essential function of high schools is broad—or universal—preparation for postsecondary success. 

## Does Your State Track Students Through the Pipeline?

- States need one data system with a unique identifier tracking youth through K-12 and postsecondary education
- Track dropouts
- Make student performance data more user-friendly and valuable
- Allocate resources to “gaps”

**Notes:**
In most states, education data systems are fragments, incompatible, and difficult to use across levels of the system. 

The key to implementing an integrated data system is assigning a unique identifier to each youth that can be used for K-12 and postsecondary institution recordkeeping. 

Data from different systems should be warehoused and maintained together, not separately. NCLB is helping prompt states to track high school dropouts and make student performance data more user-friendly, but while you are building the architecture for K-12 NCLB compliance, seize the opportunity to build a K-16 system that allows educators and policymakers to see the education pipeline as a single trajectory. 

Florida provides an example of a best practice on this recommendation. Its student unit record system links K-12 and postsecondary education, workforce, and UI wage records. Policymakers view the data system’s reports as factual and credible; the data inform program and resource decisions, including termination of ineffective programs. It also allows educators and policymakers to focus on gaps, such as weaker availability of rigorous courses in some urban districts. A state-funded partnership with the College Board now begins to fill this gap.  

## Does Your State Send Consistent, Clear Signals?

- Standards, assessments, and curricula need to reflect the requirements of employers and colleges
- Financial aid requirements need to reinforce academic expectations
- States need the capacity for P-16 policy coordination

**Notes:**
While states have made great progress in identifying what young people should know and be able to do at different points in their K-12 education, they have done so with almost no input from the two key consumers of their products: colleges and employers. 

In many states, standards tested by high school exit exams are below the standards that public colleges use to determine admission and placement. 

The single most powerful change that states could make would be to better align high school exit requirements with the expectations of colleges and employers. 
States like Oklahoma now have evidence of how powerful it can be to give kids, particularly first-generation kids, clear signals about what it takes to succeed in college. In Oklahoma low-income kids know in 7th grade what classes they need to take and what ACT score they need to earn, where they are tested regularly to see their progress toward earning this score, and where a college education is paid for if you do these things. As a result, these low-income kids who meet the academic expectations set for them have higher college enrollment rates, get better grades, need less remediation and persist at higher rates than all other students. 

But consistent, clear signals for kids and their families – policy alignment in education jargon – can’t happen with educational systems designed as separate entities, not seamless parts of a pipeline. States are increasingly looking for ways to bring educators, business, and civic leaders together to set P-16 policies. Indiana is poised to lead the nation on policy alignment because of the hard work of its Education Roundtable, a P-16 collaboration, created by statute, that brings key leaders regularly to the table to advise the Governor, legislature, and Superintendent. 

## Does Your State Promote Learning Options?

- States need to create new high school models to complement comprehensive schools
- Good charter legislation
- Finance
- Expand existing programs that improve the secondary-postsecondary transition
- Flexible funding
- Outreach and targeting
- Credit transferability

**Notes:**
Fourth, does your state promote learning options. The nation’s large, one-size-fits-all high schools are themselves an obstacle to success for many young people, particularly low-income and low-achieving youth. 

States need to create and support new high school models that vary in their structure, curriculum, financing, and target population. They include schools that are open throughout the year; blur and minimize the transition between high school and college; are based on community connections and resources; emphasize technical preparation for good jogs; and deliver instruction and assessment on the Internet. 

States can start by examining their charter laws. A well-designed charter law tends to have multiple aughroize entities; autonomy in budgeting, staffing, and day-to-day operations in exchange for the same accountability as all other schools; and access to startup capital and facilities financing. Further, 100% of FTE funding should flow to these approved models. 

Dual enrollment is present in almost every state, but participation is often limited to the brightest students. To expand these opportunities, states need to look at how flexible their secondary and postsecondary funding rules are to permit—and encourage the growth of—dual enrollment and blended models such as early colleges. 
States like Texas have launched an initiate to expand AP courses to underserved students, which includes stipends for teacher training and payments to schools for each students who successfully completes one or more AP courses. 

Last, states need to work on statewide postsecondary articulation agreements so students’ hard work results in college credit. 

## Does Your State Have an Aggressive Strategy to Improve Low-Performing High Schools?

- Specific statewide plans for high schools should identify and differentiate schools and specify actions
- Recruitment and retention policies and resources need to focus on hard-to-staff high schools
- Corrective actions for high schools

**Notes:**
Last, states can’t improve high school and college completion rates without looking hard at their chronically low-performing high schools. 

First, states must identify and differentiate low-performing high schools that are more or less capable of “righting” themselves with time, resources and outside help. The measure of “promoting power” (the # of 12 grades divided by the number of 9th graders at the school 4 years earlier) can help make this differentiation. 

Many states have teacher recruitment and retention policies, but few target these policies and resources on the poorest-performing schools, with tend to have the highest percentage of uncertified, inexperienced, and least well-educated teachers. 

Kentucky, for example, allows school districts to experiment with financial incentives aimed at attracting teachers to hard-to-staff positions. But even states like Kentucky can look fresh at this exemplary policy and ask themselves what they can specifically do to attract teachers to low-performing high schools. 

Last, states needs to identify a set of intervention strategies for high schools that don’t show the internal capacity to improve. In states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York, these high schools are being closed and reopened as smaller, theme-based high schools contained within a single plant. 

Second, states mus

## Does Your State Recognize the Urgency?

- Changes in the economy and retirement of baby boomers will cause a deficit of 14 million workers with postsecondary education.
- Changes in demographics mean all states will look like Texas in 50 years.
- Without increases in education attainment, every state will be poorer.

**Notes:**
But perhaps the most fitting question is not one that allows you to check off a box on a list, but causes you to think about whether your state recognizes the urgency to improve high school and postsecondary completion rates. 

As the recovery from the 2001 recession accelerates, there could be a shortage of as many as 14 million workers with at least some college by 2020. That is more than the current populations of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wisconsin COMBINED. 

States and communities are coming to terms with their K-8 achievement gap, but haven’t really gotten serious about their high school and college completion gaps. 

And yes, demographers say you will look like Texas in 50 years. In Texas, 1/2 of the population today is not white. Trends in immigration and birth rates show that in all states, the non-white and white populations will be approximately equal in 2050. 

The Texas demographer has warned that current gaps in high school and college success—if not quickly closed, will have profound implications for the states’ economic and social health. Median income will decline, incarceration rates and prison expenditures will rise, and more children will live in the cycle of poverty. 

And the same is true for you. 

## “By marrying the goals of excellence, equity and efficiency for our nation’s secondary and postsecondary systems, governors and other state policymakers will help determine whether states will be vibrant, prosperous places to live.”NGA and JFF’s opinion editorial in Education Week, March 24, 2004

- Preparing America’s Future Regional High School Summit
- St. Louis, Missouri
- April 23-24, 2004

**Notes:**
Urgency is meant to galvanize our best efforts though, not scare us into inaction. I close with a quote from an editorial NGA co-wrote for Education this spring. 

So get out those check-lists and talk about where you need to get started.