Tough Choices or Tough Times - New Hampshire Sets Forth on a Bold Plan

State to allow 10th graders to graduate and continue academics at the community or technical level.

Tough Choices or Tough Times, the 2006 report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Worker, set forth some very bold steps for improving American education. The plans set forth within the document earned enormous praise from a vast number of educational experts.

As but one example, Michael Kirst, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, offered this assessment:

“Tough Choices or Tough Times provides a bold and specific road map for transforming all levels of education—preschool through postsecondary education—to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing global economy. It calls for massive fundamental change in education structure, curriculum, teacher compensation, and assessment, as well as in the roles of virtually all our education institutions.”

Within the document, Step One of the vision asks America to think courageously.

“A number of other countries assume that their students are ready for college — really ready for college — when they are 16 years old. So let’s start out assuming that we can match or even exceed their performance if we are doing everything right.”

As a means to reaching that specific assertion, the report goes on to suggest the creation of a set of Board Examinations. In an attempt to match the expectations of other countries, the first Board Exam would be given at the end of 10th grade.

The exams would be designed to test students in a set of core subjects based upon a syllabus provided by the Board. The critical point of the exams will be to discern whether or not a student “has learned from the course what he or she was supposed to learn.”

Taking the exams would not be a do or die, pass/fail concept. The report states:

“Students could challenge these Board Exams as soon as they were ready, and they could keep challenging them all their lives, if necessary. No one would fail. If they did not succeed, they would just try again.”

The commission report insists that 95 percent of students will meet the new standard once it is implemented. Students who score well enough on the tenth grade exams would then be guaranteed the right to go to their community college where they could “begin a program leading to a two year technical degree or a two-year program designed to enable the student to transfer later into a four-year state college.”

New Hampshire on Board
A little more than two years after the report was released, New Hampshire has announced it will begin implementing all aspects of Step One of the Tough Choices document.

On October 30th, New Hampshire education officials revealed the state would begin the lengthy process, beginning with the preparation of a rigorous new set of exams that will be available to its high school sophomores. In keeping with the report’s suggestions, tenth graders who can demonstrate proficiency on those exams will be deemed prepared to attend either the state’s community college or technical college system.

The move essentially means that students will be eligible to test out of their last two years of high school should they desire to do so. State officials expect this ability to complete school earlier will provide built in incentives for students. Ultimately, the belief is that those incentives will lead to higher competency in the core school subject areas at much earlier ages.

Giving students a chance to finish their education sooner also has the state expecting a potential reduction in dropout rates. More importantly, much of the current funding used to educate 11th and 12th graders could be freed up for other educational options.

On the flip side, those students who wish to attend a four year college will continue for the traditional four year high school program. Upon finishing these final two years, students would take a different set of exams, tests deemed more difficult than those that will be given to the sophomores, to determine attendance at four year schools.

Reinventing High Schools
Marc Tucker, the co-chair of the commission and president of the National Center for Education and the Economy in Washington, offers a very harsh assessment of the current high school program.

Tucker stipulates that most American teenagers slide through high school, calling it a mandatory pit stop. However, it has become more of a place to simply hang out and socialize with peers.

Therefore, the new move is one that will aggressively address the longstanding concern that high school often serves as nothing more than a holding tank for a large number of adolescents.

In addition, since half of all students who do opt for college attend a community college, Tucker notes that it only makes sense to let those students start earlier. According to Tucker, allowing students to begin at an earlier age could create savings of as much as $60 billion a year nationally.

However, as one might expect, concerns have already emerged. One key issue being raised centers upon test scores of students who are but 16 years-of-age. There are concerns that this is too young to determine the future of a child.

Those questioning the process insist that students who attend a technical school will generally earn far less over their lifetime than those who go on to attend a four year college and earn a bachelors degree.

These same individuals insist that such a structure will exacerbate America’s educational disparity between the haves and the have nots.