Nearly two years ago, the state Board of Education approved the first-ever common set of expectations all Colorado students must meet to earn a high school diploma, starting with the class of 2021.

The idea is to move beyond the mishmash of graduation requirements at 178 school districts and replace antiquated systems of counting credit hours with measures that matter.

The shift envisioned for Colorado, a bastion of local control, grew out of education reform laws that are supposed to better prepare students for college and the workplace.

Now, state officials are contemplating significant changes to those 2013 guidelines, including giving more local control over ways students can prove themselves, lowering the bar in some cases and eliminating science and social studies requirements, leaving only English and math.

An advisory work group, heavy with school district representatives, wants to stick with previously established minimum scores on ACT and SAT college-entrance exams but reduce “cut scores” on four other measures, according to a draft proposal obtained by The Denver Post.

Bottom line: If approved by the Board of Education this spring, graduating from high school in Colorado would be easier than under the scenario approved two years ago.

Depending on the point of view, the changes would represent a premature retreat or a necessary correction.

Elliott Asp, special assistant to Education Commissioner Robert Hammond, said the proposal is “nowhere near a final document.”

“We have spent a lot of time asking, ‘Is this reasonable, does it make sense, what do we need to change so we can feel comfortable helping folks implement this?’ ” Asp said. “We are trying to find a way to make this work in a productive way across the state.”

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are the only other states that lack uniform statewide graduation expectations. The Colorado plan, even if altered, would take a state at the back of the pack and put it in front of many others.

What has taken Colorado so long? While other states give their legislatures or boards of education authority to establish graduation requirements, Colorado is the only state whose constitution puts control of curriculum entirely with local districts, said Jennifer Zinth, director of the High School Policy Center at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.

To work around that, a plan for graduation “guidelines” was incorporated into a sweeping 2008 education reform law called the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, or CAP4K.

“Menu” of requirements

The board guidelines adopted in May 2013 include a “menu” of options districts can give to students to demonstrate competency in English, math, science and social studies to graduate.

The list includes college entrance exams, Advanced Placement courses, International Baccalaureate programs, military entrance tests, industry certificates, state tests and “capstone projects,” college thesis-like assignments that typically involve a presentation.

Students will need to meet minimum requirements in at least one of those options in each subject.

Districts now set bars for graduation through varying course-based requirements in English, math, science, social studies and a variety of electives. The number of credits needed and how they are calculated run the gamut. All Colorado students must take civics to graduate.

The state board directed the Department of Education to convene groups of educators, business leaders, parents and others to help ease the transition, said Misti Ruthven, the department’s director of post-secondary readiness.

The group assigned to examine that menu of options did much more.

Asp said support exists to remove competency in science and social studies as a condition of high school graduation.

The rationale: State law requires the guidelines align with state college admissions requirements, which cover only math and English.

Also proposed: allowing other existing testing products and locally developed assessments that would first need state approval.

The proposed reductions in cut scores — including in AP and IB — stem from the group’s conclusion that the bar should be college readiness, not success, Asp said.

“Think of it like this: To graduate from college, do you need to be successful in graduate school already?” he said.

The advisory group’s recommendations, when finalized, likely will go to the state board for a vote this spring, Asp said.

More pathways

Bruce Messinger, superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District, said lowering the bar on some standards is fine as long as students know what they need for success in their next step.

He said more pathways to a diploma are important, heeding a call from parents, teachers and others for more personalized education.

“Sometimes the system fixes that standardized things really are contrary to what communities want,” Messinger said. “There’s a worry we get on a narrow pathway to academic success if the system is too tight and restrictive.”

But could that tempt schools to push some students toward the easiest exits, selling them short?

“That is a legitimate worry,” Messinger said. “We don’t want to track students prematurely and we don’t want to steer students having more difficulty getting through high school to lower tracks because it will help keep our graduation rates up.”

The move to revisit the standards also comes amid growing backlash to standardization and high-stakes tests for all students.

“We are standardizing and narrowing what public education is about,” said Charlotte Cianco, superintendent of the Mapleton Public Schools in Adams County. “It seems like we are hearing more about a metric as opposed to a dream.”

Compared to the few other states using national assessments to identify college-readiness, Colorado’s proposed minimum scores rank below those of Alabama and Arkansas, are identical to Kentucky’s and are comparable to Florida’s and Oregon’s, a Denver Post review found.

An ACT math score of 22 is the national benchmark for being ready for a first-year college course, according to the ACT. Colorado’s minimum score to start college math is 19. That is also the proposed cut score for earning a high school diploma, which the advisory work group looking at other changes still supports.

The Colorado cut score was chosen “based on what our institutions have found to be good predictors of college success,” said Rhonda Epper, chief student success and academic affairs officer for the state Department of Higher Education.

As part of the CAP4K law, high school graduation guidelines are supposed to be in harmony with Colorado’s college remedial education policy.

That policy, too, is in the midst of a revision in response to research calling into question a heavy reliance on high-stakes tests for remedial placement.

Beyond test scores

Colleges and universities are moving to “more holistic” admissions policies, looking beyond test scores to letters of reference, school profiles and more, said Andy Burns, director of admissions at Fort Lewis College in Durango.

Burns said minimum expectations for high school graduation are needed to help bring down the state’s remediation rates.

In 2012-13, some 37 percent of Colorado high school graduates needed remedial courses in college. Students get no course credit for remedial courses, and those placed in them are far more likely to drop out.

“Some districts might feel their toes have been stepped on,” Burns said. “But in the end, it’s a smart move to set clear expectations.”

School reform advocates worry about backtracking, though opinions vary on the seriousness of the proposed lower minimum scores.

“If they lower the standards, at some point it becomes meaningless,” said Van Schoales, chief executive officer of the reform group A+ Denver. “It becomes just another paper chase and defeats the whole purpose of what from my perspective is the most important policy change in Colorado in the last decade, no question.”

Jen Walmer, Colorado state director of Democrats for Education Reform, said she is pleased the state is adopting uniform expectations and is not as concerned with reductions in cut scores — with one exception.

One proposal calls for lowering the bar for students showing competency through concurrent enrollment — college-credit bearing courses taught by college-approved high school teachers.

The courses attract rural students and students in the country unlawfully for whom college can be costly and inaccessible, Walmer said.

The state Board of Education voted to require a C in concurrent enrollment courses. The proposal is to reduce that to a passing grade.

That a D would be good enough “is somewhat heartbreaking,” Walmer said, because the gap between the two grades is significant.

Lowering requirements now, when schools have several years to prepare, is ill-conceived, said Scott Laband, president of Colorado Succeeds, a coalition of pro-education reform business leaders.

Three-fourths of Colorado jobs will require more than a high school diploma by 2020, and fewer than one-fourth of residents meet that description now, according to a 2014 state-sanctioned jobs report.

“When you raise the bar, kids raise their game,” Laband said. “By lowering the bar, I think we are sending the wrong signal.”

Graduation rates

Michael Clough, superintendent of the Sheridan School District southwest of Denver, has a different perspective.

On-time graduation rates at the tiny, impoverished district’s high school and alternative school jumped from about 40 percent to 60 percent from 2013 to 2014. The high school’s graduation rate was 82.7 percent, almost six points over the state average.

Clough credited strategies ranging from extended school days to extensive math requirements and different tiers of diplomas.

But Clough said he is concerned that out-of-reach proficiency scores will lead to abysmal graduation and dropout rates.

The high school’s most recent composite ACT score was 16.2, well short of the minimum score set by the state board.

“I am not opposed to raising the bar, and I am certainly not opposed to accountability,” Clough said. “But I worry about all the unintended consequences making a change like this. Those consequences tend to hit children of color and children in poverty first and hardest.”

Nationally, however, graduation rates have not declined since many states began holding students to higher expectations starting in about 2010, said Zinth, of the Education Commission of the States.

Colorado’s on-time graduation rate for the class of 2014, meaning students who graduated in four years, stood at 77.3 percent.

That ranks below the most recent available national rate of 81 percent, from the previous year. Colorado’s dropout rate declined for the eighth straight year, to 2.4 percent.

The Loveland-based Thompson School District began inviting community members to discuss the changing expectations more than a year ago.

Chief academic officer Margaret Crespo said it’s a challenge to serve both the highest achievers and those who have little choice but to earn a living right out of high school.

“You walk a fine line,” Crespo said. “Sure, of course, companies want the best and brightest. But there are many ways to get there, and not everyone is going to reach the finish line at the same time.”

“It’s about balancing the fact they are children,” she said. “We get lost sometimes that these are kids. They want to learn. It’s hard enough not to squelch their passion for life and learning.”

Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971, egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski

Online extras

To read the draft proposal of changes to Colorado’s graduation guidelines, find this story online at www.denverpost.com.