Ohio Won’t Approve Weak Credentials That Students Use as ‘Shortcut’ to Graduate

Hoping to make sure high school students don’t waste time earning career credentials that won’t help them find jobs, Ohio is slashing the credentials counted towards graduation, axing easy ones that thousands of students earn, but don’t lead anywhere.

High schools nationally are increasingly encouraging students, especially those who don’t plan on going to college, to earn certificates and licenses in trades or office skills so they have a chance to earn a living after graduating. Ohio, since 2019, has made earning a credential that’s recognized by employers a key path to earning a diploma.

But concerns have grown in recent years over a mismatch nationally between what schools offer and businesses want, with one study estimating that only 18 percent of credentials earned by high school students matter to employers.

Criticism has increased in Ohio of schools helping students with poor academic skills use weak credentials that aren’t sought by employers as a “workaround” or “shortcut” to graduate, but give them little chance of making even $30,000 a year.

In response and at the direction of the state legislature, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce this summer cut its list of credentials that qualify students to graduate from 164 to 70.

The list notably drops two groups of credentials — one for retail sales and one for government management of emergencies — that several thousand students use each year to graduate despite little demand from employers. In the most extreme case, about 9,000 students earned credentials wanted for just three jobs.

“This is a little bit of a game changer when we think about workforce readiness and kids coming out of K-12,” said Steve Dackin, director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

Dackin said too many students are skipping college without having a plan to make a good salary. The state needs to help these students before leaving high school, he said.

“It’s really, really important that while we have them, that they are earning the kind of credentials and skills that are going to make them employable right away,” he said.

Ohio is also tightening how students can combine more than 700 approved, but lesser, credentials to earn enough credential “points” to graduate, a tactic that one expert described as “random acts of credentialing.” That loophole let students seek easy and basic credentials scattered across different fields, such as drivers licenses, CPR and OSHA safety classes, without learning any skills deeply enough to matter to employers.

Ohio has cut that list from more than 700 credentials to 126, available only as part of 21 pre-determined “bundles” of specific credentials in five fields  — agriculture, business, construction, health care and manufacturing. Each bundle includes “foundational” credentials such as OSHA safety training, but only as first steps toward more advanced training.

Adriana Harrington, managing director of policy for ExcelinEd, a national education advocacy non-profit, said including credentials as a way to earn a diploma is a “slippery slope” that can lead to states approving too many low-value credentials.

“Ohio is a kind of cautionary tale,” Harrington said.  “The intent was very strong a few years ago…but then their list ballooned to over 700 that students could earn. I think we’re just seeing the reckoning and the pendulum shift back.”

Ohio Excels, a nonprofit created by the state’s major chambers of commerce, helped create the new list along with a way to evaluate each credential by how many students find jobs within a year, how much money they earn, whether a field is growing, and if the classes can count toward earning a college degree.

“Grappling with divining exactly what value is for an industry-recognized credential is something that the country has been asking questions about for the last 10 plus years,” said Cassandra Palsgrove, Ohio Excels’ vice president of strategic partnerships and government affairs. “Ohio is really going to take the lead on that.”

Collecting wage and hiring data to fully analyze the value of credentials are important steps all states should take, said Emily Passias, deputy executive Director of Advance CTE, the association for state directors of career technical education.

She had previously helped create Ohio’s early list when working at the since-renamed Ohio Department of Education and is glad the state is one of just a few aggressively using better data available now to refine it.

“We have to move from essentially identifying credentials based on vibes, which is what many, many, many states are doing,” said Passias. “Things would get on the list and then never come off again, and they just led to these enormous lists of credentials that were divorced from actual impact.”

“What Ohio is trying to do here is sort of right the ship and really focus on credentials that are going to create impact both for learners and for the employer community,” Passias added.

The Fordham Institute, a non-profit education advocacy group active in Ohio, also praised the changes. Fordham has reported multiple times the last few years on ways some districts, notably urban, high-poverty ones where some students struggle to graduate, have large numbers of students earning low-value credentials just to earn a diploma.

“Credentials are intended to signify students’ acquisition of technical skills and help them gain an edge in the labor market, not simply be a workaround to a diploma,” wrote Fordham’s Aaron Churchhill. “Ohio schools have discovered the easiest ones to attain and used them to get students to the finish line (and inflate their graduation rates as well as report card ratings).”That system, Churchill and Fordham’s Jessica Poiner reported, had more than 9,000 students earning RISE UP retail sales and customer service credentials in 2023 — credentials that, combined, allow students to graduate — but were sought by employers for just three jobs statewide that year.

In addition, more than 4,000 students earned a series of National Incident Management Systems credentials sought for fewer than 300 jobs that year.

In announcing the list, Dackin conceded, “we know this is going to have a large impact on graduation rates.” 

He and the department declined to elaborate on an issue  at the heart of any debate over  graduation requirements — how to balance making diplomas hard enough that they carry meaning vs. making them so hard it shuts out students and leaves them with no diploma and chance to find a job.

The department would say only that the requirements would start with freshmen entering high school this fall, so schools have time to adjust, and that schools can apply to include other credentials, though they should meet standards for pay and employer demand.

The Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati school districts, all flagged by Fordham as having large numbers of students using weak credentials, also declined to address that question directly, other than to say they support having credentials that matter and that other credentials could be added later.

Adding new credentials to the list is the likely next battleground, since districts and businesses are open to apply to include any they can show have value. Fordham’s Churchill said the state’s decision cosmetology licenses on the new list of standalone credentials despite low pay raises concerns for him. He hopes the will stand its ground, stick to its standards and keep a “clean” list.

“Vendors and industry groups with financial interests and schools looking to maintain sky-high graduation rates could urge the committee to approve their favored credential or pressure it to set a low bar,” he wrote. “If cosmetology is in, what about others?” 

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