Every year brings a new challenge to K-12 education, but one problem has grown impossible to ignore: High schools are graduating students who cannot do the work a diploma should certify.
As the national director of outreach for Moms for Liberty, an organization that advances parental rights and education reform, that conviction has taken me to the United Nations Transatlantic Summit, meetings with members of the European Parliament, and national conservative gatherings, where I have argued that parental rights and academic rigor in public schools are inseparable. I started this job because I watched public schools fail to prepare students for the real demands of adulthood.
As a mother of four, I couldn’t just sit back and watch. Restoring education is not a slogan, but the central task of my life. At Moms for Liberty, we insist on results, not merely ceremonies. I want public schools to have the same priorities.
The data confirm what parents already see: America has become very good at graduating students and much worse at preparing them. The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate for public high schools reached 87% in 2021–22, up from 80% a decade earlier, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Politicians treat that rise as progress. But the nation’s report card, or the National Assessment of Education Progress, tells a different story.
Public schools are handing out more diplomas while fewer seniors are demonstrating they deserve them. On the 2024 NAEP, 45% of seniors scored below NAEP Basic in math, an increase of 5 percentage points from 2019, and 32% in reading. On their “5 Takeaways from 12th Grade NAEP Math and Reading Results,” the National Assessment Governing Board estimated that 33% of students are considered academically prepared for college-level math and 35% ready for college-level reading.
The specific numbers don’t matter as much as their direction: High school completion rose. Students’ demonstrated skills did not.
I believe the Every Student Succeeds Act increased the mismatch between graduation rates and demonstrated skill. ESSA, signed by President Barack Obama on December 10, 2015, repealed No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress and the requirement that all students reach proficiency by a fixed date. Instead, the law gave each state greater flexibility to design its school accountability system, set its own long-term goals, and benchmark the proficiency levels on state exams, subject to federal approval. If a high school’s graduation rate is at or below 67%, states have to intervene. However, ESSA does not provide requirements for course rigor, credit-recovery rules, or whether a recovered credit rests on the same exam as the original course.
When low graduation rates trigger federal requirements for states to intervene and mastery is determined by states, the outcome is predictable: Schools are incentivized toward social promotion, online recovery that is not demanding, and grade inflation.
Fixing this graduation crisis requires not a new federal slogan but a division of labor among states, school districts, and the federal government.
For graduation rates to show true mastery, state legislatures and state boards of education must make sure their proficiency and college-readiness standards are co-equal with their graduation rates in their state accountability formulas, not footnotes under it. These should be based on quarterly assessments. States should also publish the graduation gap every year: the number of students receiving a diploma on one line, those who meet the state standard in reading and math on another, and those who they determine are ready for credit-bearing college work by their standards on the next.
Governors, state legislators, and chief state school officers should set a floor higher than ESSA’s 67% graduation trigger for schools that also miss proficiency targets. State education leaders should require that students use the same “end of course” exam as or an equivalent to the original course to make up lost credits—not just the exam provided by the online credit recovery program, which may have a different standard of rigor—so that students can demonstrate their ability to master subject matter.
District leaders should treat attendance as an academic issue. Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center report that the rate of chronic absenteeism nearly doubled after the pandemic and, while it’s since come down, it remains above pre-pandemic levels. Students who are not in class cannot master the work. Yet, many still recover credits and walk at graduation. Districts should name a target below the current 1 in 5 chronic absenteeism rate and report it by school to parents and the school district. Core course credit should be tied to actual time on task, which includes presence in the classroom.
The federal role should be narrow: Keep NAEP, require states to report the assessment gap next to the graduation rate, and ensure a diploma does not count as the most important evidence that a state plan is working.
State education leaders can look to Mississippi as an example of how to improve student performance. The state’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act of 2013 required science of reading instruction, literacy coaches, early screening, and a 3rd grade promotion gate. Students who could not demonstrate reading proficiency did not advance automatically. In 2013, Mississippi ranked 49th in 4th grade reading on NAEP. By 2024, it ranked ninth. Although graduation rates improved during the same period, the state’s gains began with clear standards, honest measurement, and accountability for student achievement. Academic improvement came from the state establishing a defined method, an honest measure, and a consequence when a student was not ready.
States must not call high graduation rates a success until their students show they have mastered the skills required to earn a diploma. Until then, the graduation ceremony runs ahead of the education.
