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The New York Times
Opinion
Honest Data on High
School Dropouts
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com on the Web, April 28, 2008
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002
was supposed to create clear, reliable data that told parents how local schools
stacked up against schools elsewhere in the nation. It has not worked that
way, thanks in part to timidity at the Department of Education, which initially
allowed states to phony up even the most basic data on graduation rates.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings took a welcome step in the right
direction by issuing new rules for how those rates are calculated.
By the 2012-13 school year, states will have to use the generally accepted way
of computing their dropout rate. That means tracking students from the day
they enter high school until the day they receive regular diplomas, counting as
nongraduates those who leave without the diploma. This method was endorsed
three years ago by the National Governors Association, which realized that
accurate graduation rates were a vital indicator of how well the schools were
doing.
Had the federal government led the way on this issue instead of waiting to see
how the wind was blowing the country would already have built a sound data
collection system.
Instead, we went through a period during which some states wrote off students
who dropped out in grade 9, 10 or 11, which allowed them to report a bogus
graduation rate based on the number of graduates who began the year in the
senior class. Other states brightened a grim picture by including G.E.D.
recipients, who were actually dropouts and should have been counted as such.
Not surprisingly, the state-reported rates were nearly always higher than the
estimates derived from the cumulative method.
It’s a relief to know that honest graduation rates are on the way.
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