The Education Trust December 2003
The prolific and data-driven Education Trust recently issued this 8-page analysis of state graduation data that raises many questions about the accuracy of those data and the veracity of the agencies that issue them. The reason for focusing attention on this problem now--and EdTrust is not the first to do so--is that No Child Left Behind requires schools, districts, and states to report publicly on their high-school graduation rates as part of the law's monitoring of academic progress. The first round of state-level (but disaggregated) graduation data was due at the Department of Education on September 1, intended (says EdTrust) "to provide an honest accounting of students' progress through the educational system and baseline information for establishing future graduation rate targets." Some states did a good job of this but many did not. Using Jay Greene's widely-respected method for calculating graduation rates (essentially following the 9th grade student "cohort" to see how many of them receive diplomas four years later), EdTrust found (besides three states that reported NO data to the Department) a great many states with big discrepancies--and in all but half a dozen cases those discrepancies made the state's graduation rate look rosier. In about half the states, the discrepancies are ten percent or greater. For example, Virginia reported a graduation rate of 84.7 percent while the Greene methodology yields a rate of 74 percent; in Connecticut it's 87.3 percent versus 70 percent; and in worst-offending North Carolina (which uses what EdTrust calls a "definition for the graduation rate that defies reason") it's 92.4 percent versus 63 percent. When the data are disaggregated by race, additional discrepancies turn up. For example, Indiana reports Latino and black graduation rates of 85 percent and 88 percent respectively, while the Greene (and EdTrust) methodology shows the truth to be 59 percent and 53 percent. Bottom line: there are two problems. One is woeful graduation rates, especially for minority kids. The other is the dearth of honest comparable reporting of accurate information. EdTrust tasks the federal Education Department with compelling states to solve the latter problem, correctly noting that "the foundation of any successful long-term improvement strategy is good information." Solving the underlying problem--not enough young people completing high school--is the obligation of states and districts. This is an important analysis that you can find on line at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/4DE8F2E0-4D08-4640-B3B0-013F6DC3865D/0/tellingthetruthgradrates.pdf.
