On the Threshold - Impacts of Barely Passing High-School Exit Exams on Post-Secondary Enrollment and Completion

Oct 15, 2026

On the Threshold analyzes how barely passing high-school exit examinations affects post-secondary enrollment and completion, with attention to differences between low-income and higher-income students. Using Massachusetts data and leveraging the cut score design, the study identifies distinct attainment-margin effects: barely passing can increase high school graduation for low-income students, while patterns reverse for college graduation. The findings show higher-income students benefit on 4-year completion when just passing, with broader policy implications for accountability and equity in high-stakes testing.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Background and Context

Benefits of Exit Examinations

Equity Concerns and Critiques

Research Design and Causal Claims

Findings on High School Graduation

Findings on College Graduation

Research Article Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis December 2022, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 717–733 DOI: 10. 3102/01623737221090258 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© 2022 AERA. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/epa](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/epa) On the Threshold: Impacts of Barely Passing High-School Exit Exams on Post-Secondary Enrollment and Completion John P. Papay Ann Mantil Brown University Richard J. Murnane Harvard Graduate School of Education Many states use high-school exit examinations to assess students’ career and college readiness in core subjects. We find meaningful consequences of barely passing the mathematics examination in Massachusetts, as opposed to just failing it. However, these impacts operate at different educational attainment margins for low-income and higher-income students. As in previous work, we find that barely passing increases the probability of graduating from high school for low-income (particularly urban low-income) students, but not for higher-income students. However, this pattern is reversed for 4-year college graduation. For higher-income students only, just passing the examination increases the probability of completing a 4-year college degree by 2.1 percentage points, a sizable effect given that only 13% of these students near the cutoff graduate. Keywords: educational policy, educational reform, accountability, high stakes testing, quasiexperimental analysis, regression discontinuity Ensuring that high school graduates have the skills to succeed in college or careers has been a central focus of educational policy over the last two decades. States have pursued a variety of policy instruments to achieve this goal. In 13 states, including Florida, New York, Texas, and Virginia, all students must pass exit examinationsin core subject areas (typically mathematics and English language arts) to earn a high school diploma. Massachusetts, the site of this study, has had such exams in place since the early 2000s, affecting 70,000 students in each year’s graduating cohort. In recent years, several states—including California—have moved away from these policies because of fears that they provide barriers to graduation. Understanding the consequences of these examinations—both positive and negative—is critical for decisions about whether to continue these policies and, more importantly, for designing policy responses that mitigate negative impacts. We study one equity consequence of these examinations. By design, states must define a level of proficiency that qualifies students for a high school diploma and specify a cut score on the test that represents this level. As such, these exit examinations necessarily assign students with essentially equal skills to either pass or fail based on whether their scores fall just above or below the minimum passing score. This potential threat to within-group equity—treating essentially similar students differently—means that students may have different outcomes based on their position relative to the cutoff. We leverage Papay et al. this design feature to draw causal claims about the impact of barely passing or failing the examination on student outcomes. Our past work in this same context has shown that barely failing the examination substantially reduces the probability of high-school graduation for urban low-income students but not for higherincome students. Here, we extend these analyses, using data from five successive cohorts of students to estimate impacts on college graduation. This analysis reveals a nuanced story: while we continue to find impacts on high school graduation for low-income students but not their higherincome peers, we find the opposite pattern for college graduation. Barely passing the 10th grade mathematics exam increases the probability of 4-year college completion by about 20%(2.2 percentage

FAQs

What is the main focus of the study?

The study examines the impacts of barely passing high-school exit exams on post-secondary enrollment and completion, especially across low-income versus higher-income students.

How does the research use the exam cut score to support causal conclusions?

Because students with essentially equal skills are assigned pass or fail based on whether scores fall just above or below the cut score, the study leverages this design feature to make causal claims about outcomes near the cutoff.

What effect does barely passing have on 4-year college completion?

For higher-income students near the cutoff, just passing the mathematics exam increases the probability of completing a 4-year college degree by about 2.1 percentage points, while low-income students show no impact on this outcome.

Oct 15, 2026

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