Remote learning hurt high school grad rates. Ditching exit exams helped, new research finds

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Until now, the story of how COVID affected who got their high school diploma went something like this: Graduation rates dipped a little for the class of 2021, but recovered the following year. The pandemic contributed to a small, but notable departure from a decade of upward progress.

But a new report paints a more complicated picture. Where a student lived and what policies their school followed during the pandemic affected how likely they were to graduate from high school.

When states that normally required a high school exit exam waived that requirement, graduation rates went up. When students spent a greater share of time learning remotely or in a hybrid setup, graduation rates fell. And the longer a district kept school buildings closed in 2021 and 2022, the less likely their students were to graduate on time.

Those are among the findings of a report released Tuesday by a team of researchers from The GRAD Partnership, an initiative led by nine education organizations including the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University and the nonprofit American Institutes for Research.

The report also cautions that the pandemic’s full effects on high school graduation likely haven’t been felt yet, as the children who struggled in middle and elementary school are still working their way toward a diploma. High rates of absenteeism that have persisted since the pandemic represent another “wild card” that could affect future high school graduation rates, researchers write.

“Through the class of ‘28, I think we’ll still be seeing these impacts on kids who were in fifth to eighth grade during the pandemic,” said Bob Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins education professor and an author of the new report. Members of the class of 2028 were in fourth grade in March 2020 and are currently high school freshmen.

Balfanz worries about this year’s senior class, who spent much of middle school learning remotely, and then “crashed” on a key national math test in eighth grade.

Taken together, Balfanz said, that points to the need for high schools to step up progress monitoring over the next few years, both for academic coursework and work-based learning.

Balfanz said schools need to be asking: “Who has a pathway, who doesn’t?”

More Time in Remote Learning Lowered Grad Rates

Graduation rate trends varied a lot across the U.S. and within the same state.

The nearly 7,000 school districts included in the analysis represent more than half of the 13,000 school districts in the country. Of those, around a third ended up with graduation rates that were worse in 2022 than in 2019, while around a third ended up with better ones. Just over a third of districts didn’t see much change.

Balfanz said that is likely a reflection of how the pandemic affected communities in very different ways. Some students lost loved ones or lived in a community where many parents lost their jobs. Some high schoolers took on jobs or cared for siblings, while others did not.

Other factors may have pushed graduation rates up, the report notes. Some states and districts waived certain high school graduation requirements, while some schools adopted more lenient grading policies and were flexible on deadlines.

That means the kinds of support kids need now will vary a lot by place, too.

“There’s not going to be some sweeping national solution,” Balfanz said.

Still, there are some steps schools can take based on the report. The data showed that the last few months of ninth grade and of senior year can be very important for students to stay on track with credits and graduate on time, though those tend to be times when schools ease up on advising. Schools could try layering on extra support in the final quarter of the year.

Another suggestion, Balfanz said, is to try some of the strategies that have been effective in raising graduation rates in the past, such as creating small groups of freshmen who meet regularly with a caring adult to get guidance and support, sometimes known as a ninth grade academy. Schools could consider launching 10th grade academies, too.

And while the policies that affected high school graduation rates stemmed from the emergency response to the pandemic, Balfanz says there are still lessons that can be learned from how they played out.

When districts only taught remotely during the 2020-21 school year, they saw a 0.8 percentage point dip in their graduation rate, compared with districts that taught fully in person, researchers found. Districts that used a hybrid model had a high school graduation rate that was 0.4 percentage points lower than districts that taught fully in person. Researchers estimate that nearly 12,000 fewer students graduated on time in 2021 due to remote and hybrid instruction — around 3% of all students who didn’t graduate on time that year.

Balfanz sees this as yet another piece of evidence that while virtual learning can work for some high schoolers, it’s not a mass solution and should be deployed with caution, especially for struggling students, like those who’ve been suspended from school.

Earlier research found that districts that stayed remote during the 2020-21 school year had lower test scores, especially in elementary and middle school math.

Higher rates of hybrid teaching in 2021 continued to depress high school graduation rates in 2022, but graduation rates actually went up in 2022 among districts that taught fully remotely the year before.

This finding deserves additional research, the report states, but it’s possible that districts that taught mostly remotely during the 2020-21 school year invested more the following year in supporting students and helping them catch up on missed credits. It’s also possible, researchers wrote, that students who were later to shift away from fully remote instruction experienced a surge of engagement when they were finally back in person.

Waiving Exit Exams Raised Graduation Rates

When a dozen states waived high school exit exams during the pandemic, district graduation rates were about 0.7 percentage points higher than they otherwise would have been. Researchers estimated that removing the exit exam requirement helped an additional 21,000 students graduate from high school from 2020 to 2022.

The findings come as several states are reevaluating what should be required of students to get a high school diploma and as several states are getting rid of the exit exam requirement.

New York state, for example, recently announced it would no longer require students to pass the Regents exam to graduate, starting with the 2027-28 school year, while Massachusetts voters decided earlier this month that high schoolers should no longer have to pass a standardized test to get a diploma.

Balfanz says the exit exam data point is another indicator that high schools need better information about what skills and knowledge will be most helpful to students later in life. Some states track how students do after graduation, and those data systems could provide valuable information to change what high schools require of students.

“Let’s use those more to see what about the high school experience really matters,” he said, “and use that to shape what we’re asking of kids.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.