End of Course Exams Will Drive Students to Minimum Graduation Plan

Beginning next school year, Texas high school students will have to pass twelve high stakes tests to graduate, instead of the current four tests. This year's freshman class is the last cohort to have to pass English, Math, Science and Social Studies Exit TAKS to earn a high school diploma. This year's eighth graders will have to pass twelve end of course exams (EOC's) in Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, English I, English II, English II, World Geography, World History and U.S. History in order to graduate.

Or, will they? Not if they switch to the Minimum Graduation Plan. Texas education law states that all students will graduate under the Recommended Graduation Plan, and can only switch to the Minimum Graduation Plan when they are 16 years old (which typically occurs in their sophomore year), if a parent and school administrator signs off on it, when they have failed to promote to grade 10 one or more times, and have completed two credits in each of the four core subject areas (English, Math, Social Studies and Science.)

The Minimum Graduation Plan is going to become an increasingly attractive option - if not the only option - to get struggling kids graduated from high school. I'm talking about kids who enter 9th grade and start failing multiple EOC's right off the bat, the spring of their freshman year.

For all the talk about increased rigor, and college and career readiness standards - which, to be clear, I believe preparing kids for post high school opportunities is absolutely critical - job one in our K-12 public education system is to get kids graduated from high school.

School district leaders are pondering all of the possibilities for low performing eighth graders right now, as course catalogs for next school year will go to print this Fall. If data predicts that some students won't be successful in the 4x4, they may be steered towards a Science program that includes only two Science credits (allowable under the Minimum Graduation Plan) - Biology (with an End of Course Exam) and IPC (which will have no EOC.) These same kids would take three math courses, with only two of them having EOC's (Algebra I and Geometry). The third could be Math Models, with no EOC.

You get the picture. Is this what the Texas Legislature intended - more kids on the Minimum Graduation Plan because the End of Course system is likely to increase the drop out rate dramatically?

School leaders are wondering if they will be penalized by having increases in the Minimum Graduation Plan, but the future school accountability rating system under EOC's has not been finalized, so who knows.

For another look at unintended consequences, read my post on the unfunded mandates of the EOC's.