A student in the Toppenish School District waters flowers in a plant and greenhouse science class. The Washington state district offers a wide range of career and technical education classes that smaller and more rural districts struggle to provide. (Courtesy of Toppenish School District)
When 18-year-old Edgar Brito thinks about what he’ll do in the future, mechanical engineering is high on the list.
The senior at Washington state’s Toppenish High School first considered the career after he joined a STEM group in middle school. In a ninth grade class, he researched the earning potential for a STEM degree (“so much more money”) and the demand for mechanical engineers (“exploding”).
So Brito took some engineering classes at his high school, became president of his state’s Technology Student Association, and is starting at the University of Washington this fall on a pre-science track.
Brito’s experience is what state education leaders hoped for when they replaced the high school exit exam with multiple pathways to graduation. When he graduates in June, Brito will have completed several diploma pathways, including ones aimed at preparing for college and building career skills.
But his experience isn’t necessarily typical. He has friends who have no idea what pathway they’re on — or if they’re on one at all. The requirements could be clearer and advisers could spend more time talking about them with students, he said.
“Making sure that we know exactly what our pathway is and what it means to be on a pathway would have definitely helped out a lot more students,” Brito said.
Five years after Washington rolled out its pathways, they appear to have helped more students who aren’t college-bound to graduate, which was part of the goal. But the system has also created new issues and replicated some old ones.
For the Class of 2023 — the most recent year with available data — around 1 in 5 seniors didn’t have a pathway. That meant they weren’t on track to graduate within four years and at risk of dropping out. Some students relied on pandemic-era waivers that don’t exist anymore. That’s similar to the share of students who didn’t graduate on time in 2019, the final year of the exit exam.
Asian and white students are much more likely to complete one of the math and English pathways, considered the college-prep route, while Native students, English learners, and students with disabilities are more likely to have no graduation pathway.
“The implementation of graduation pathways has reinforced that the student groups who are the furthest from educational justice are completing the requirement at lower rates,” state education officials wrote in a 2023 report.
Across the state, students don’t have equal access to the pathways. Many schools, especially smaller and rural ones, struggle to offer more than a handful of career and technical education classes. Some career pathways train students for low-paying jobs with little opportunity for advancement. Some students get funneled to the military pathway, despite having no aspirations to serve, because the aptitude test is easier to pass. Many teens, like Brito’s friends, find the pathways confusing.
Washington is not alone. Nearly half of states offer multiple diploma options or graduation pathways. And some, like Indiana, have already taken a second pass at their pathways. Many have struggled to address the same big questions, including what exactly high school is for, and what students should need to do to earn a diploma.
Now the state board of education is poised to overhaul its graduation requirements again.
Piling on more ways for students to graduate is not the answer, said Brian Jeffries, the policy director at the Partnership for Learning, an education foundation affiliated with the Washington Roundtable, which is made up of executives from across the state.
“Let’s better prepare our students to meet the pathways, [rather] than keep creating a smorgasbord or a cafeteria of options, which too often turn into trapdoors,” said Jeffries, who sits on the state task force that’s looking at graduation requirements. Until disadvantaged kids have access to better instruction and more support, he said, “we’re going to keep spinning this wheel.”
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