San Diego Unified Quietly Watered Down Its Graduation Requirements

In 2011, San Diego Unified officials voted to do something big: They made it harder to graduate high school.  

That may strike many as odd. After all, people often evaluate school districts by graduation rates. Enhancing graduation standards could negatively impact that metric. 

But too many kids were graduating without achieving the minimum requirements  to go on to college. The new requirements raised the bar and evened the playing field, giving everyone a shot at seeking a college degree, district leaders reasoned. 

Since those standards took effect a decade ago, San Diego Unified officials have taken pride in the district’s rigorous graduation requirements. 

But now, as the district’s graduation rate has plateaued and begun to creep back down, district leaders are reversing course. Earlier this year, the board approved an alternate graduation pathway that will make it easier for kids to graduate. It also may mean that students who go down that path won’t have taken the classes needed to be accepted into college. 

Raising the Bar 

The board’s 2011 decision to increase graduation requirements didn’t come out of nowhere. For years, community members had raised serious equity concerns about the district’s graduation requirements. Even the American Civil Liberties Union raised objections.  

Put simply, San Diego Unified’s looser graduation standards meant thousands of students were graduating high school without the classes they needed to even qualify for admission at California’s public universities. It seemed to allow Black and Latino students, in particular, to slip through the system without minimum achievements to go to college.  

The district stiffened its graduation requirements to include the suite of courses, called the A-G requirements, required to earn admission to a public university. That meant that simply by earning their high school diploma, every student had a shot at attending college straight out of high school. 

“The key issue here is about equity,” then-school board member John Lee Evans said in 2011.  

For the next decade, that more rigorous standard ruled the day – until last month. 

Flipping the Script 

The first glimpse of the changes came in late January. At the Jan. 28 board meeting, Jennifer Roberson and Erin Richison, the district’s head of instruction and head of the office of graduation respectively, walked board members through a presentation that unveiled a new board policy.  

That policy proposed four changes. Three of them were uncontroversial, like allowing classes to qualify for A through G requirements and providing students with significant disabilities an alternate diploma. The fourth, however, inspired pushback. It created an “alternative sequence” for students to obtain a diploma.  

This new pathway would focus on ensuring that students met California College and Career Indicators while also offering them greater flexibility. It was the product of two years of meetings by a district work group, Richison said. 

“This is about individualization for all students, each student getting their diploma,” Richison said. 

Despite district officials’ work to increase the graduation rate, the percentage has hovered in the high 80s for nearly a decade, Richison and Roberson said. The new pathway would be their answer to that problem.  

“There are times when we have tried all the interventions and supports, and we have to have another approach to supporting our students,” Roberson said.  

There were indications, however, that the move may have been inspired by concerns about what may be coming next. Earlier in the presentation, Roberson dropped a startling statistic: “only 57.8 percent of our students district-wide in grades 9-12 are on track for A through G completion.” 

In her introduction of the presentation, interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula said that while the change a decade ago was “great work,” district leaders now had to do something about the students “our system pushes out.”  

“Our challenge now is different than in 2016. The world needs our kids to be prepared for is more diverse. There are lots more opportunities, like apprenticeships, sponsorships, mentorships,” Bagula said. “This is about flexibility, choice and alignment and serving all 100 percent of our students.” 

That flexibility argument was evident by those who spoke during public comment. More than a dozen educators and community members spoke in favor of the proposed changes, many of whom were members of the deaf community who said the current graduation requirements made it difficult for them to earn a diploma. 

Board Member Shana Hazan was the first to comment on the proposed changes. While she supported the first three, the vagueness of the alternative pathway made her nervous.  

The board policy read that the courses required for its standard diploma “may not accommodate the needs of some students, therefore a district panel may provide an alternative sequence for individual students.” 

There were no specifics regarding which students would qualify, no details of guardrails, no list of classes required, not even a plan to roll the new pathway out. That could mean the same students the 2011 decision was made to help could be the ones hurt by this new one, Hazan said. 

“My fear is, when there aren’t all of us sitting here … you could have a superintendent who says, ‘All I care about is getting to a 95 percent graduation rate, and what’s the easiest way to do that is just to start issuing this alternative sequence diploma.’ And who ends up suffering are the students who’ve been historically marginalized by this district, who have not been treated equitably,” Hazan said. 

Bagula echoed Hazan’s nervousness, zeroing in on the equity angle. 

“That’s been my biggest concern this entire time,” Bagula said. “I think we have to be very specific, because I know exactly who the students are that we sometimes funnel into a different lane, and so I want to make sure that we have very detailed requirements and a very well thought out plan.” 

Despite Hazan’s desire to put the pathway element on ice until further guidance could be provided, the board ultimately moved to approve the new board policy while requesting Richison and Roberson return with further details on the safeguards that would be implemented. Hazan was the lone “no,” vote – a vanishingly rare occurrence for a board whose votes are almost always unanimous.  

Another Unanimous Vote 

Three months later, Roberson and Richison brought the promised details back to the board. This time, many of the previous blanks were filled in.  

The classes required include some of what exists in the A through G requirements, such as three years of mathematics and two years of science but also shave the four years of English down to three. It also replaces two years of a foreign language and one year of visual and performing arts with one year of either one of those subjects or a career technical education course. The only addition is a new requirement with options of dual enrollment courses and a career technical education pathway. 

In short, while a student could conceivably choose this new pathway and graduate with the courses required to go directly to college, that’s far from guaranteed.  

The pathway would be rolled out over the next year, with district officials beginning immediately to “identify eligible students, focusing on students who are off track to graduate on time with their peers.” District officials would continue to monitor outcomes to “avoid equity gaps.” 

But the district’s decision to select students who are offtrack to graduate on time may necessarily mean Black and Latino kids end up in the alternate route. Currently, they significantly underperform their white and Asian peers. 

District officials did not make Bagula, Richison or Roberson available for interview. But during the board meeting, Bagula said the district was still committed to its traditional graduation pathway while expressing cautious optimism about the new one. 

“This shift reflects the best of who we are as a district, a district committed to excellence without exception and equity without compromise and the unwavering pursuit of success for the 100 percent of students, 100 percent of the time,” Bagula said. “We’re especially mindful of how this pathway is implemented. We must guard against any unintended tracking or over identification of student groups.” 

At the April meeting, Hazan ended up voting in favor of the update. What really changed her vote was seeing that phase one of this program would be closely monitored for signs of inequity. The new policy’s pledge to provide postsecondary counseling for students in the alternate pathway also played a role. 

When asked if the new pathway was lowering the bar for students, she said it was “changing the bar.”  

The new pathway, she said, recognizes a one-size-fits-all diploma doesn’t necessarily fit all, particularly those interested in jumping straight into careers. It also offers an opportunity for those previously at risk of dropping out. 

“There are students who today are juniors that are off track to graduate, and it would be nearly impossible for many of those them to meet all of our… rigorous requirements,” Hazan said. 

Still, Hazan harbors concerns. She’s also pushing for additional changes to the policy. For example, the stipulation that students maintain a 2.0 GPA is not written into the current policy. She wants to see that changed. 

After our call, Hazan followed up with a text laying out what she hopes to see from the change. 

“In addition to seeing more positive career and financial outcomes for students that will now be able to earn diplomas and complete a (career technical education) pathway and/or college classes during their four years of high school, I expect to see far less than 11 percent of our students pursuing an alternative graduation pathway and a lower dropout rate,” Hazan wrote.