Graduation Requirements

Setting Standards

Schools are generally given the authority to govern the standards for graduation. However, these standards must fall within the state graduation requirements. Generally, states set minimum credit hour requirements both for graduation generally and for individual subject areas, such as English, mathematics, science, social studies, and physical education. A small number of jurisdictions, such as Colorado, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, allow local boards much greater latitude in setting graduation requirements.

States and schools must also provide adequate notice of the requirements the student must fulfill to achieve graduation. In 1981, the Fifth Circuit, in Debra P. v. Turlington, found that students have a property interest in a diploma once they complete the specified requirements. Further, the court explained that educational institutions cannot withhold or revoke diplomas or degrees without first providing some amount of due process to candidates.

To maintain value in degrees or diplomas awarded at graduation, institutions enact policies that require students to meet certain grade, testing, service, or other requirements, such as paper completion at the higher-education level. These grades, testing, and other policies have frequently been challenged in court but have generally been upheld.

An array of cases in the early 1990s challenged community service requirements that school officials and states adopted as a prerequisite to graduation. These provisions were questioned not only under standard constitutional provisions related to education, such as the First and Fourteenth Amendment, but also pursuant to the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against involuntary servitude. However, the courts that examined the issue dismissed these claims, citing the differences in the kind of servitude the Thirteenth Amendment originally sought to prohibit; the educational nature of the service requirements; and the choices, such as private school education, that would allow the students to avoid the requirement. Although the courts differed somewhat in how they upheld service-oriented graduation requirements, all of the courts that considered the issue have ruled in favor of the educational institutions, reasoning that service requirements are constitutional.

Testing Cases

Graduation testing requirements have seen more litigation recently. Nearly half the states now require students to pass tests to qualify for high school graduation; in the year 2008, 7 out of 10 high school students must meet this criterion. Unlike the relatively established law surrounding service requirements, the challenges to exit examinations are presently ongoing. For instance, just in 2005 to 2006, a single state, California, had suits attacking the state's exit examination requirements on their inequitable application to low-income and minority students, unfairness to special education students who may not be able to answer most questions, and the failure of the state to consider alternative measures to the exit exam that could provide similar assurances of graduate competency.

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