The two following articles are of interest. The first one was carried in the local paper (it is a washington post article), the second I found on a google news search has more information from the study - and gives a much better picture of the issues at hand. I will link both below with a little commentary after the first article.Report Disputes U.S. High School Graduation Rates By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A03
Barely half of all black, Hispanic and Native American students who entered U.S. high schools in 2000 will receive diplomas this year, according to a new report that challenges conventional methods of calculating graduation rates.
Of all students who entered ninth grade four years ago, only 68 percent are expected to graduate with regular diplomas this year. The rates for minorities are considerably lower -- 50 percent for blacks, 51 percent for Native Americans and 53 percent for Hispanics -- according to a measure devised by the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
Methods of calculating graduation rates are a perpetual subject of debate, and there are many differences in the ways states and school systems report data. By any measure, though, blacks and Hispanics graduate at lower rates than whites, a situation that has long concerned educators.
--snip--
The authors criticized the federal No Child Left Behind law for requiring that test score data but not graduation rates be broken down by race.
They suggested that the law's requirement that schools meet escalating proficiency goals, as well as the proliferation of state high school exit exams, might encourage school officials to nudge out lower-performing students. Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, agreed that graduation rates are worse than is generally reported, but she opposed the notion that federal testing requirements cause students to leave.
"How can you possibly suggest that just making educators accountable for student learning makes them cheat and push students out of school?" she said. more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6946-2004Feb25.html Now Ms. Haycock's statements are quite... interesting/asinine. A few months ago the story broke about the falacy of the "Texas Miracle" - where the nclb legislation was fashioned and Rod Paige's Houston district (where he had been supt) that had been hailed as having demonstrated phenomenal success - was shown to have ... pushed lower performing kids out - not count them - as a means of improving their overall "performance". Following that story there was a rash of stories on other major urban districts suggesting that similar patterns had also occured.
This is an area I have long been concerned about and followed for years. There are all sorts of ways to push kids out and not count them as dropouts. The following is a scenario that I am familiar with: The state changed how it calculated dropouts/graduates a few years earlier in response to some districts calling foul, because looking across attendance/enrollment rates from 9-12 - they claimed that declining enrollment districts (high family mobility out of the district) were disproportionately affected (always looked worse) when compared to districts with growing enrollments. Thus the calculation was changed... just count students enrolled during the school year. Look at fall enrollment numbers grades 9-12, look at those same enrollments in the spring, average the decline in enrollment by 4 (four grades)... presto... "Graduation rates". (seriously.)
Now... if a student stayes enrolled - even if they are no longer attending... they are not a dropout. Since changes in enrollment over the summer are no longer counted as dropouts... there is an incentive to count nonattending students as still in school - until the summer - then just quietly drop them. This is how a district that sees a 66 percent decline in enrollment betweeen 9th and 12th grades... can suddenly have a 92+% "Graduation rate".
Add - the higher stakes testing - which retroactively placed punitive measures upon schools... Let's go to a hypothetical school where there is a 25% chronic absentee rate... do we invest in getting those kids back into school - if we perceive the students as disinterested or frustrated (e.g., doing poorly - and thus not wanting to attend) - then do we expect those students to "help" or "hurt" our overall test scores... so should we rationalize that those students do not want to be there anyhow... so why fight to get them back in school and have their test scores "punish" us and other students (by losing resources based on NCLB punitive measures.)... with the funky way the state counts dropouts... the school just carries the students on the books... no dropout counted...
Big problem - if we perceive education institutions as an avenue for social mobility and equity.
On to the next story - anyone with any concern about dropout rates and related issue - should read the following article. Much more information than in most of the stories that have gone into papers related to the release of the Urban Institute's study.
Minority high school graduation rate just 50%Thursday, February 26, 2004
By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Only about half the minority students in the United States graduate from high school, according to a report released yesterday by the Urban Institute and the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
In Pennsylvania, the researchers said, 41 percent of Hispanic students and 46 percent of African-American students graduated from high school in 2001. That contrasted with a graduation rate of 81 percent among white students.
"We have a tragic situation today under which high school graduation in American now is literally a '50-50 proposition' for minority students," said Christopher Edley, co-director of the Civil Rights Project.
much more - excellent article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04057/277625.stm