In a common trend nationwide, many states have mandated high school graduation exams. These exams are often very similar to GED exams, and high school students must pass them to graduate. Aside from known problems with standardized testing, it turns out this posses another rather major problem: It hinders students from getting into good colleges.
This is very counter intuitive, but what it comes down to is that high schools that lack sufficient funding are often forced to choose between college preparation and preparing students for the graduation exam. Since students can graduate without the college preparation, it is almost always the one to suffer.
Obviously, this is a major problem. Without college preparation, high school literally offers no benefit. When the public school system was created, its primary intent was to prepare students for the workplace. The skills learned in high school were sufficient to qualify for a vast majority of entry level jobs. This is no longer the case. Few employers willing to accept education lower than college even care about high school graduation. The improvement in employability gained by high school graduation is negligible. In other words, without college preparation, high school is a colossal waste of four years. If we are not going to reform our public education system to meet its original goal, the least we can do is reform it to meet the goal of preparing students for college.
While teaching to exit exams is a major problem that hinders the ability of high schools to prepare students for what really matters, the most basic solution is incredibly simple. Choose an exit exam that will help with college preparation. There are two incredibly obvious candidates, and neither of them will take any extra work from the schools. These exams are the SAT and the ACT. While both of these tests are graded, their grades mean different things to different schools. Some colleges care more about high school GPAs than about these aptitude tests. Some schools will accept ACT scores as low at 18, while others require 24 or 27 or higher. Schools or states can easily pick a minimum grade that counts as passing though. The benefit of using these tests, instead of some state mandated test that means nothing in the real world, is that teachers will be teaching to the tests that actually matter.
The ideal situation would be to administer both of these tests, with minimum passing scores on each, because there is really no solid standard which all colleges use. Often more competitive schools prefer the SAT, mostly because it penalizes students for wrong answers. Many schools prefer the ACT though, because they consider penalizing incorrect answers to be counterintuitive or even unethical, since it encourages students to second guess themselves and skip questions they may know the answers to, resulting in inaccurate scores. Many schools will accept either test. Teaching to both will not only offer the biggest benefits, it will also make sure students have a reasonably broad education in the subjects colleges will expect them to already have a background in.
There is potential for state mandated high school exit exams to be valuable to students, but arbitrary tests that do not ensure students are prepared for the real world are totally worthless. High schools that do not prepare students for college are a waste of time, money, and effort. While there is a lot of reform that needs to happen to meet this goal, one of the simplest things that would make the biggest difference is replacing current high school exit exams with real world college entrance exams. This would help low income students the most, and they are the ones that need it the most, but overall, it would have a major impact on education in the U.S., as it would help a great many very smart students get into colleges that can do them justice.
