Do Easier Credentials Inflate Graduation Rates in Pennsylvania?

When Pennsylvania introduced new graduation requirements four years ago, lawmakers said there would be options for students who struggled with standardized tests to show they were ready for college or careers.

Monica Hawk, CEO of Philadelphia’s One Bright Ray Community High School, understood the aim. But in her role running six accelerated high schools, she also had concerns. Some of her students were months or years behind in school before returning to get their diplomas. Few could pass state tests.

In addition, the new requirements would mean a new bureaucratic headache. And she wouldn’t have more money, staff, or resources earmarked to help.

So Hawk focused her team on a graduation pathway established by the requirements that she called her school’s “fail-safe plan.” Students still have to pass their main classes. But the pathway’s additional requirements have nothing to do with academic achievement.

Instead, it hinges on students presenting three pieces of “evidence” that they’re ready to graduate from a state-approved list. In practice, it means a student can take a couple of quick online courses to earn a few industry-recognized credentials, count those as evidence, and then be dubbed graduation-ready. This pathway has quickly become the most common way Philadelphia students are graduating.

Since the state introduced the “evidence-based” pathway as part of its graduation overhaul, starting with the Class of 2023, graduation rates have improved. But at the same time, high school students’ scores on state math and reading tests have declined. And educators who spoke with Chalkbeat said they’re seeing a troubling trend: Students are getting low-value credentials just to check off requirements, especially in schools with large shares of high-needs students and resource-poor districts.

“Credentials are often the tail that wags the dog,” said Adriana Harrington, managing director of policy at ExcelinEd, a nonprofit that has compiled nationwide data on credentials. “Folks will decide what [career and technical education] programs they want to offer by which credential they think they can get a student to pass.”

Educators did say they appreciated that students who may be poor test takers have another path to graduation, unlike other states where passing state tests is required. And they were glad more students were graduating. A high school diploma means more opportunities and better pay on average.

Still, they worry that schools are incentivized to push students to earn these credentials by state and district officials who want to see graduation rates continue to rise. Many of those credentials — like a popular one in ladder safety — have little value or relevance to students after graduation.
It’s unclear whether students are any better off after they graduate because of these changes. Today, no one at the state or district level is analyzing which credentials students submit to meet graduation requirements. Many of the lawmakers who championed the requirements under a state law called Act 158, including former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, are no longer in office.

Erin James, press secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said the state works to ensure all graduation pathways are “equally rigorous.” She said students graduating via the evidence-based pathway can use credentials to “step directly into the workforce.”

“A ladder safety credential is not ‘low value’ if the student wants to be a firefighter or is doing an internship with a roofer. It may actually be required for that student’s job,” James said.

Philadelphia district leaders said they were not focused on analyzing credentials students use to fulfill requirements.

Adam Zeiser, principal of One Bright Ray’s Elmwood campus in Southwest Philadelphia, was blunt about the typical value of many of the credentials students use to fill the evidence-based pathway’s requirements.

“The short answer is, no, I don’t think they help prepare them for much,” he said. “But I think that we help prepare them, as much as we can.”

Pushing Philadelphia Students Towards Credentials Now Routine

Since the state’s graduation overhaul, graduation rates have improved every year. Last school year, nearly 90% of Pennsylvania students graduated within four years, up two percentage points over three years.

The evidence-based pathway is one of five options students can use to fulfill graduation requirements. It’s quickly become the most popular one in many Pennsylvania districts.

Statewide, around 20,000 students met the requirements through the evidence-based pathway last school year, equal to around one-fifth of all students in districts where data was available. At some schools, more than three-quarters of students used this pathway to graduate, including at several cyber charter schools.

In Philadelphia, around 40% of all graduates fulfilled requirements via this pathway. At One Bright Ray’s Elmwood campus, all but one of last year’s 29 graduates used the evidence-based pathway, according to district data.

The other pathways largely require students to earn certain scores on standardized tests, or to be enrolled in a specific career and technical education program or pre-apprencticeship.

Several Philadelphia high school educators said that creates a simple problem: Many seniors can’t earn those high scores or access those career and technical education programs. But it’s a virtual guarantee students can pass the evidence-based pathway by submitting easy-to-earn credentials.

Many options for “evidence” can count towards the requirements, including a full-time job offer, a dual-enrollment credit, and an AP or IB score. But by far, the most common kind are industry-recognized credentials. Last year, in districts where data was available, 85% of students statewide who graduated via this pathway submitted at least one credential. Some met the requirements solely by submitting credentials.

Researchers have found some credentials do lead to better paying jobs, but they’re often the ones that are more expensive and difficult to get.

At One Bright Ray, Hawk said schools offer credentials in CPR, workplace safety, mandated-reporter training on how to spot and report suspected child abuse, and ladder-safety training. “If we had a really dedicated student, and they absolutely wanted [something else], we would find a way,” she said.

But for the most part, students don’t know of other options. And even if the school helped out a single persistent student access more costly options, doing so for all students is an expense that One Bright Ray can’t afford, she added.

Teachers at several Philadelphia high schools who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak about the issue publicly described similar challenges with the lack of funding and time.

One district teacher said the pathway system created “a host of work arounds that schools have to go through to get kids to graduate.”

Unlike dedicated career-and-technical education programs, for example, standard high schools don’t get money specifically to spend on credentials.

That’s part of why the ladder safety credential — a free, two-hour online course — is so popular, teachers said.

But even though many students take the ladder-safety course, teachers said they’ve had trouble persuading students that the course is truly worthwhile. How do you convince a teen who wants to be a cosmetologist, for example, that ladder safety will be a key step towards that goal?

Pennsylvania does not appear to be studying whether the new pathways have benefitted students, or if more credentials mean better outcomes for graduates. Philadelphia school district officials said they’re not tracking long-term data about the credentials students use to fill graduation requirements.

“I couldn’t answer why a certain school would give them ladder safety, if it’s not linked [to their interests],” said Michelle Armstrong, the district’s director of career and technical education. “But our advice has always been: the certification that you offer young people, try to align to their interest.”

Armstrong said the Philadelphia district consults with industry experts to determine which credentials to offer. For students in career and technical education programs, the district has spent decades ensuring students get credentials that are useful and pays for all of them.

But for students not in those programs, Armstrong said she’s not focused on monitoring which credentials students get. The district leaves that responsibility up to individual schools.

Graduation Requirements Create Unequal Burden for Pennsylvania Schools

While thousands of Philadelphia students earned credentials to meet graduation requirements last year, they’re not dispersed evenly across the city.

At the city’s most-selective high schools, like Central and Masterman, nearly every student does well enough on state tests to use their scores to meet graduation requirements through test-related pathways.

But for schools where most students do not pass the tests, the alternative graduation requirements require hours of staff time to manage, explain to students, and track.

District data shows that at schools like Strawberry Mansion and Vaux Big Picture, more than three-quarters of students used the evidence-based pathway to fill graduation requirements last year.

State data obtained by Chalkbeat shows a similar trend. In some of the state’s highest poverty districts, like Chester-Upland and York City, the vast majority of students graduated last year via the evidence-based pathway. The majority of those students counted credentials towards the requirements.

But in some districts in Philadelphia’s wealthy suburbs, like Radnor Township and Upper St. Clair, almost no students graduate via the pathway.

Philadelphia teachers at non-selective high schools said the new requirements amount to an additional burden on schools and teachers who are already spread thin.

One charter school teacher said many students at his school make up failed courses through quick online credit-recovery programs that experts say are often suspect. Then, those students fulfill Act 158 requirements through additional and easy online modules.

It troubled him that students could get their diploma without meeting any academic standards the school set for them.

“I feel like we’re kind of just saying, you don’t have to learn anything to graduate,” he said.

But others said they saw some value in the new graduation requirements.

One district high school teacher said the requirements meant teachers at least had conversations with students about their plans. And he’s seen that earning credentials can boost students’ confidence.

He wished his school could offer students more mentorship programs and pre-apprenticeship opportunities.

“The idea of some of this is useful,” he said. “But they don’t always set a student up for their own pathway.”

Pressure Is Acute On High School Students Close to Graduation

It’s not just Pennsylvania dealing with this issue, experts say. Across the country, the number of students earning credentials during high school has shot up as local and federal legislation supports training students for careers.

Studies of workplace credentials have found that many don’t result in more opportunities for those who earn them.

In one recent study of Texas students who earned credentials between 2017-2022, the most popular ones, by far, were credentials in Microsoft Word and “floral skills.”

Matt Giani, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the study’s lead researcher, said in an email that the findings show that “the way we’ve designed accountability systems has allowed schools to game the system and pump out short-term, online, open book, low-hanging-fruit certifications.”
Because Pennsylvania’s requirements are relatively new, it’s likely to be years before school leaders have any sense of whether Act 158 has meant students are more prepared or successful after graduation.

At One Bright Ray, a poster in the hallway of the Elmwood campus explains the different pathways. Staff check in regularly with students about how they’re progressing with the requirements.

But none of that eliminates the pressure to take the easiest route to a diploma.

“There are some students who are right up against graduation, they need one more piece of evidence,” Hawk said. “And they’re like, ‘let me just do ladder safety.’”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.