Money and motivation: other nations elicit better performance from their students through the use of high-stakes graduation exams. Along these same lines, Michigan now links college scholarships to high-school test results

Education Next, Winter, 2004 by John H. Bishop

WHY DON'T AMERICAN HIGHSCHOOL students perform as well as their peers in other industrialized nations? One reason is that they devote less time and intellectual energy to their schooling. Learning takes work, and that work is generally not going to be as much fun as hanging out with friends or playing Grand Theft Auto. The question is how to pull them away from such distractions in favor of studying longer and harder. The strategy followed by nations throughout East Asia and much of Europe has been to base admission to specific universities and academic programs (such as law and medicine) largely on students' performance on a battery of subject-specific examinations devised by a nation's ministry of education. These high-stakes exams are very different from the multiple-choice aptitude tests--the SAT-1 and the ACT--that serve a similar function here. Each subject exam is three hours or more, and students write essays or solve multistep problems, showing their work. My analysis of data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (see "A Steeper, Better Road to Graduation," Feature, Winter 2001) demonstrates that students in countries with such high-stakes exit exams out-perform students in other, equally developed countries by 1.3 grade levels in science and 1.0 grade level in math.

The idea of a government-sponsored exam limiting access to postsecondary education has never been popular in America, the land of second chances. In fact, the American higher education system's open-door admissions policies are a major strength of the U.S. economy, enabling adults of any age, whatever their background or mistakes in life, to return to school and gain new skills. Nevertheless, the problem of how to motivate students remains. The strategy in 17 states, such as Florida, Texas, and New Jersey, is to require students to pass a minimum-competency exam in order to graduate from high school. These are tests of basic skills, and the passing scores are typically set so low that the possibility of failing the tests does not motivate most students to try harder. New York State and North Carolina, by contrast, give students an incentive to study through the use of rigorous end-of-course exams that signal medium and high achievement levels, not just meeting minimum standards. The results of New York's famed Regents exams are reported on students' high-school transcripts, and students earn special Regents diplomas if they pass enough of the tests. Colleges consider the Regents diploma a mark of significant achievement, making it worth students' while to learn the tested subjects. The Regents exams give students a lofty goal to aspire to, rather than a low hurdle to jump over.

The state of Michigan rejected the use of minimum-competency exams, largely because it wanted the state's high-school test to reflect more challenging learning goals. Michigan policymakers also did not want to take the risk that a high-stakes exam would lower the rates of high-school graduation and college attendance. Instead, similar to New York and North Carolina, the state took the modest step of reporting students' scores on their high-school transcripts.

In 1999, Michigan increased the reward for good academic performance by offering the Michigan Merit Award, a one-year $2,500 scholarship for any student who scores at Level 1 or Level 2 on the Michigan Educational Achievement Program (MEAP) tests in reading, mathematics, science, and writing. Students take these tests for the first time in the spring of their junior year. They can also earn the scholarship by meeting the standards in two subjects and scoring in the 75th percentile or higher on the SAT or the ACT. Students who attend college in Michigan are eligible for the full $2,500 scholarship, while students going to college out of state can receive up to $1,000. Starting with the class of 2005, students can be awarded up to $500 more if they meet or exceed state standards on two of the four MEAP exams in 7th and 8th grade as well. College financial aid officers are prohibited from taking the merit award into account when they make need-based awards, meaning that students who earned the scholarship would not have their need-based grant aid reduced, as is common. A number of other states also have merit-based scholarship programs that are open to all students, but the awards are typically less generous and are based not on tests developed by the states, but on grades or college-admissions test scores.

Scholarship programs like Michigan's carry a low cost-benefit ratio. The total expense for the Michigan Merit Award comes to less than 1 percent of the state's K-12 education spending, yet the program has the potential to realign incentives within the school system in a way that serves the interests of students, parents, educators, and the community. It encourages students to study harder; enhances their opportunity and willingness to go on to college; improves the learning climate in most schools; and strengthens the energy for reform among parents and teachers. What makes the Michigan program so powerful is that the scholarships are based on students' performance on an external exam that reflects the state's recommended curriculum. If the awards were based instead on, say, high-school grades, many students would respond by choosing easy courses where an A is guaranteed. Teachers would face little incentive to set higher standards; in fact, the pressure to inflate grades would intensify. If the awards were based primarily on SAT or ACT scores, the main result would be an increase in Kaplan's revenues from test-prep courses. The only way to win the award is to learn the curriculum well enough to pass the state's high-school test. Unless the curriculum is misguided, this focuses everyone in the system on the main goal of K-12 education.