ODE recommends permanently ending ‘essential skills’ graduation requirement

The Oregon Department of Education is recommending permanently ending the “assessment of essential skills” graduation requirement. 

In 2021, Senate Bill 744 put the requirement on pause through at least 2024. The bill also required ODE to review Oregon’s graduation requirements and report to the Legislature and the State Board of Education by Sept. 1, 2022.

The resulting 183-page report concludes that Oregon’s high school diploma requirements don’t align with the current needs of businesses or higher education and that the requirements are applied inequitably. "Community‐Informed Recommendations for Equitable Graduation Outcomes" offers eight recommendations, including ending the essential skills assessment, to reorganize Oregon’s graduation requirements to lower barriers and better prepare students for their post-secondary plans. 

Richard Donovan, OSBA's Interim Legislative Services director, said OSBA would be working with its members to explore what they want for their communities.

“OSBA appreciates ODE’s thorough review, and we think Oregon’s students will benefit from reconsidering graduation requirements,” he said. 

Donovan expects the report to prompt deep discussions at the State Board of Education and possible legislation in 2023. 

OSBA Past President Maureen Wolf was the Tigard-Tualatin School Board chair when the skills requirement was first suspended and was mentoring high school students at the time. She said the state needs to focus support more on day-to-day work and less on add-on assessments at the end.

“Working the front line on helping kids meet graduation, the bar is about your credits,” said Wolf, who is now on the Northwest Regional Education Service District board. “If you care about kids, care about their coursework.”

ODE staff members met with more than 3,500 students, community members, educators and business representatives as well as digging into graduation data broken out by student categories and identities. They also examined graduation requirements and trends in other states.

The essential skills assessment was popular among states when Oregon adopted it in 2008 as a means of assuring students were learning what they needed to be successful after high school, but in recent years, states have been removing exit exam requirements. ODE’s report said proficiency tests are a graduation barrier that do not show any benefits.

When SB 744 passed, opponents accused the Legislature of lowering the bar for graduation by not requiring students to prove they could read, write and do math. ODE’s report, though, says the essential skills requirement is redundant, as students prove their knowledge by passing classes. The proficiency requirement is unnecessary and inequitably applied, the report says. 

ODE also recommends Oregon change its math credits requirement. Current requirements call for three math credits, starting with Algebra I. ODE recommends removing the Algebra I requirement so that schools have more flexibility in creating useful math sequences for students’ needs, such as statistical analysis or financial mathematics. 

In another highly visible and possibly controversial recommendation, ODE says Oregon should offer only a single diploma type. 

Oregon offers a standard diploma as well as a modified and an extended diploma for students who have “demonstrated the inability to meet the full set of academic content standards for a high school diploma with reasonable modifications and accommodations.”

The modified diploma requires 24 credits like the standard diploma, but more of them can come from electives. It also allows modified ways of demonstrating proficiency on essential skills. A modified diploma counts toward Oregon’s graduation rate. 

The extended diploma only requires 12 credits and no essential skills demonstration. It doesn’t count toward Oregon’s graduation rate. 

Educators told ODE the modified and extended diplomas, although well-intentioned to help students with challenges, lowered expectations and created stigmas while leaving students unprepared for postsecondary options. 

ODE would like to see a single diploma with multiple flexible pathways to achieve it. 

In general, ODE’s public engagement found people wanted schools to value students’ individual strengths and cultural differences while teaching core academic skills and post-secondary life skills.

ODE’s recommendations would aim to push students to develop those skills while removing unnecessary burdens that often fall hardest on historically underserved students. 

Oregon’s graduation regulations were last updated in 2008 and implemented over several years, creating some of the country’s most challenging requirements. Oregon’s graduation rate has steadily improved since then until it dipped during the pandemic, but Oregon still has one of the lowest rates in the country. 

- Jake Arnold, OSBA
jarnold@osba.org