High School Graduation Examination in The United States - History

History

Graduation examinations first appeared in the U.S. after the Civil War, when the Regents Board of the State of New York imposed its first exams.

A century later in the form of the Certificate of Initial Mastery proposed by the NCEE, led by Marc Tucker, in the late 1990s which was the basis for education reform legislation in many states such as Washington State, Texas and Massachusetts in the early 1990s. The paper "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages" outlined a model that a new educational performance standard should be set for all students, to be met by age sixteen. This standard should be established nationally and benchmarked to the highest in the world. Students passing a series of performance- based assessments that incorporate the standard would be awarded a Certificate of Initial Mastery. This certificate would qualify the student to choose among going to work, entering a college preparatory program, or studying for a Technical and Professional Certificate, which would be explicitly tied to advanced job requirements. These standards would not be intended as sorting mechanisms, but would allow multiple opportunities for success; the goal would simply be to ensure achievement of high performance standards for the great majority of the nation's workforce. The states would ensure that virtually all students achieve the Certificate of Initial Mastery. Most of the current high school examinations are also first given in the 10th grade even though US students are usually not expected to have completed high school until grade 12.

When examinations were first introduced, they tended to be set at a very low level (eighth grade material or below). With the more recent attention to having high standards for high school students, the level has generally increased so that all but three of the states with exit exams in 2011 set them at the tenth grade level or higher.

In Germany, students who are on a vocational track essentially end their formal education at grade 10, followed by a period of apprenticeship-based job training with an employer with limited formal education. In the United States' comprehensive high school model, all students are expected to complete 12 years of public education, with some students taking primarily vocational based courses, while college-bound students taking primarily academic courses, though education reform seeks to graduate all students with some work experience, and enough academic skills to succeed in college.