Problematizing the Black-White racial dichotomy inherent to high school graduation rate accountability: A mixed methods critical policy analysis

The U.S. Department of Education introduced the four-year adjusted cohort high school graduation rate formula in 2008 to usher high school graduation in as a high-stakes accountability metric. This policy sought to address disparate graduation rates by student race but did not attend to systemic reasons why minoritized students had lower graduation rates. Using a critical structural capital theoretical framework, this mixed methods critical policy analysis analyzes federal and state-level policy on high school graduation rate accountability and state administrative data from North Carolina to assess how policy ignores structural inequality in ways that result in divergent access to traditional forms of capital, dismissing non-traditional forms of capital necessary for college and career readiness. A critical discourse analysis of policy finds language that alludes to college and career readiness but relies on high school graduation alone as the metric. We use these findings to provide context for our quantitative analysis. In school-by-cohort fixed effects models, Black students were more likely to fail courses than similar White students but more likely to graduate high school. These findings indicate federal accountability incentivized schools to push more Black students to graduate but did so at the expense of their college and career readiness.