Job 1: Restore the high school diploma's credibility

College for all is dead, writes Dale Chu. Now high schools are trying to build career pathways to expand students' options. That's a worthy goal. But it won't work -- nothing will work -- unless schools make the high school diploma mean something. If young people leave K-12 without a strong academic foundation, they won't succeed in job training or college.

Students who coasted to graduation in passenger mode, but earned inflated A's and B's, will struggle to learn a skilled job, Chu writes. Their diplomas signal attendance, not academic proficiency.

Now credit recovery programs get students who couldn't bother to show up to a diploma too. The combination has "made graduation rates one of the least credible metrics in education," Chu writes. "Teachers know this. So do employers."

Restoring the diploma’s credibility should be the centerpiece of both workforce preparation and college preparation," he writes.

College readiness starts in elementary school, argues Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor and Purdue president. As governor, he pushed for an end to social promotion. "Too many schools choose to shuffle along kids who are not ready, dooming them to struggle and failure later on," he wrote in the Washington Post. "Whenever the K–12 system can devise ways to disguise its shortcomings, it will."

Oregon made a cryingstock of itself by ending proficiency exams for its high school graduates… A lot of losing football coaches in Oregon wish they, too, could just stop keeping score, but, of course, football is too important for such nonsense. -- Mitch Daniels

Chu also advocates higher grading standards, requiring end-of-course exams (not written or graded by the teacher) and higher graduation requirements. Policymakers could use of A–F grading of schools "not only to hold them accountable but also to give parents clearer information about school performance while there is still time to act on it."

Raising expectations earlier in K-12 would make the diploma a reliable signal of college and career readiness.

I can't envision any way to do this with a single diploma. I wonder how many students would earn a real college-ready diploma, if the standards were clear, and how many would qualify for an apprenticeship-ready diploma. And how many would go for the "basic" version, perhaps with a certificate in "ladder safety" or AI prompt-writing.