High-School Exit Exams Are Tough on Crime

Could exit exams improve teaching and learning in high schools such that criminal activity drops? I looked at the arrest rates of jurisdictions and compared them during periods before and after graduation requirements were made more demanding in two ways: adding high-school exit exams and increasing the amount of academic coursework There is a body of research detailing the connection between the highest level of education completed and a person’s subsequent rate of criminality—for example, a 2009 report found that nearly one in 10 males under the age of 25 without a high-school diploma was incarcerated on any given day, compared to one in 33 of their more educated young male peers While the arrest data are given as the total number of arrests, a more informative measure is the arrest rate, which accounts for population size Since agencies are not a commonly measured geographical area, the data contain an estimate of the total population within the jurisdiction of each police agency [ ]the minimum number of classes a graduation cohort would need to pass to earn a diploma is based on reports by the Education Commission of the States and National Center for Education Statistics