A Longitudinal Analysis on the Outcomes and Implementation of College-Ready Graduation Policy in San Francisco

• In Event: The Promise and Challenges of a College-Ready Graduation Policy: Lessons From San Francisco

Abstract

Objective: In 2010, the Board of Education in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) unanimously adopted a policy that included the college-ready course sequence in the high school graduation requirements, beginning for the graduating Class of 2014. This study examines the graduation outcomes directly impacted by this policy and the impact of systematic changes implemented to support students to meet the new requirements. This study explores: What are the high school graduation and course completion trends before and after the implementation of additional graduation policy? What are the students’ course-taking patterns under the new policy?

Framework: In recent years, several large urban school districts in California (i.e. San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Oakland) have increased their high school graduation requirements to align with University of California/California State University (UC/CSU) college admission requirements (Betts, et al, 2013). The motivations for the shift to a more rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum were primarily to remove barriers to college and produce more college-ready students to combat trends in research within and beyond SFUSD about lagging indicators of college readiness. SFUSD’s Board of Education recognized that not all students, particularly African American, Latino, Pacific Islander, English Learner, and economically disadvantaged students, were able to enroll in a college preparatory coursework and therefore were barred from entering certain career and college options after high school (San Francisco Unified School District, 2017). Therefore, SFUSD adopted the “A-G” college ready graduation policy as mechanism to increase college-readiness and close the opportunity gap. (A-G signifies a set of courses requirements needed to gain admission to the UC/CSU higher education system).

Methods: Using administrative data, we conducted a longitudinal analysis on the policy outcomes for high school students in graduating classes of 2013 to 2016. This study primarily examines two outcome measures (i.e. four-year cohort graduation rate and percent of graduates who meet UC/CSU entrance requirements, or A-G course requirements) and the graduation status measure (on-track/off-track). This progress measure takes into account of students’ completed coursework and to determine whether the student is on-track to graduate high school on time.

Findings: The analysis shows that the graduation rate has increased by approximately five percentage points from 2012 to 2016 and the percent of graduates who meet A-G requirements has increased by approximately 3.6 percentage points from 2012 to 2015, with a slight drop in 2016. The drop in the on-track rate starting after the fall semester of 9th grade until 11th grade is consistent across cohorts and subgroups and represents challenges students face to stay on track to graduate. These anticipated challenges lead to the creation of an extensive credit recovery options, a robust graduation status tracking system, and unified submission process of A-G courses.

Significance: The study reveals that district’s high academic expectations for students can lead to positive graduation outcomes. This finding stands in contrast to other research findings that suggest college-ready graduation policies can be harmful to some groups of students (Allensworth, et al., 2009; Betts, 2016).

Authors

• Julie Yu, San Francisco Unified School District

• Bill W. Sanderson, San Francisco Unified School District