Giving Compass' Take:

• Linda Jacobson reports that research connected more end-of-course exams to higher graduation rates, making an argument for keeping or increasing exams. 

• How can funders support efforts to determine the best amount and type of exams to give? 

• Read about a test that may be worth teaching to. 

States requiring high school students to take more end-of-course (EOC) exams have higher graduation rates than those with fewer such assessments. A greater number of EOCs is also linked to higher scores on college entrance exams, according to a new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative nonprofit education policy think tank.

In recent years, states have moved away from high school exit exams in favor of EOCs, as exit exams have been criticized as a barrier to graduation, especially for poor and minority students.

As with shifts occurring in K-8 assessment, EOCs in high school are designed to be more closely connected to what students are learning in class and “assess precisely the content that those courses are supposed to cover,” wrote the report’s authors Adam Tyner, associate director of research at Fordham, and Matthew Larsen, an assistant professor of economics at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.

The report looks at how EOCs are being used, the impact of the exams on student performance and future policy considerations. EOCs are a way to “incentivize students to take their coursework seriously,” just as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams do, wrote the authors.

“Looking ahead, the use of high-quality, content-linked external assessments could help push our education system toward mastery rather than seat time — a coveted goal, especially among advocates of competency-based and personalized models,” they wrote.

Read the full article about end-of-course exams by Linda Jacobson at Education Dive.