Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for June 21, 2006 H.S. DROPOUT RATE - BAD, BUT HOW BAD?

Let the debate begin!

Below are sample stories from three "general" sources...amid a multitude of localized reactions to the release of a research study of high school dropout rates.

Low graduation rates may also be a national problem, study finds

By Greg Toppo
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON � Students in a handful of big-city school districts have a less than 50-50 chance of graduating from high school with their peers, and a few cities graduate far fewer than half each spring, according to research released on Tuesday.

Fourteen urban school districts have on-time graduation rates lower than 50%; they include Detroit, Baltimore, New York, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Houston.

The findings present a bleak picture and are sure to generate controversy as lawmakers and others push to keep U.S. students competitive globally.

While the basic finding that the nation's overall graduation rate is about 70% is not new, the study suggests that graduation rates are much lower than previously reported in many states. It also could bring the dropout debate to the local level, because it allows anyone with Internet access to view with unprecedented detail data on the nation's 12,000 school districts.

Among the nation's 50 largest districts, the study finds, three graduate fewer than 40%: Detroit (21.7%), Baltimore (38.5%) and New York City (38.9%).

The advantage of the new study is that �you could apply it to any and all school districts in the country with the same validity � and the same problems,� says Michael Casserly of The Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for large urban districts.

He says it's still unclear whether researcher Christopher Swanson overstates the problem. Swanson's analysis, strictly speaking, is not a calculation of dropout rates but of graduation rates; it estimates the probability that a student in ninth grade will complete high school on time and with a regular diploma.

Adding to the debate: The study is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which promotes its own brand of high school reform. Last year, Bill Gates called U.S. high schools �obsolete.�

The study, which uses 2002 and 2003 data, the most current available, finds that public schools graduate 69.6% of an estimated 4 million eligible students each spring, meaning about 1.2 million students likely won't graduate this year. That means about 7,000 students drop out per school day, Swanson says.

Researcher Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute says Swanson's figures �seriously understate graduation rates, especially for minorities.� They say that just 52% of blacks graduate, and 57% of Hispanics.

Mishel says by comparing the number of graduates with the number of ninth-graders, Swanson exaggerates the effects of the �ninth-grade bulge,� in which many ninth-graders are held back a year before tackling more advanced work and, often, state-mandated exit exams. Mishel's most recent research puts the overall U.S. graduation rate at 82%.

From the New York Times...

A Third of U.S. Dropouts Never Reach 10th Grade

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

WASHINGTON, June 20 � More than a third of high school dropouts across the nation leave school without ever going beyond the ninth grade, according to a report released here on Tuesday.

The report, "Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Rates and Policies," by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center of Education Week newspaper, also estimated a 39 percent graduation rate for students in New York City, 25 percent lower than the city has publicly reported.

The report found that nationwide, 69.6 percent of the students who enter ninth grade graduate in four years with a regular diploma. It found both the most and least successful states in the New York metropolitan region, with New Jersey, at 84.5 percent, having the highest graduation rate in the country, and Connecticut, with 79.3 percent, coming in fifth. New York State, which demands that students pass exams in five subject areas, had the ninth lowest graduation rate, at 62.5 percent.

Education researchers as well as state and local officials vary widely in their assessments of graduation rates and even who counts as a graduate. For example, a report earlier this year from the Economic Policy Institute, estimated that 82 percent of all students nationwide graduated from high school. The Education Week study, with some of the lowest graduation rates ever reported, will likely fuel the debate. The Education Week study used data from the 2002-3 school year. Its figures for states were slightly lower than figures the federal Education Department also released here on Tuesday, which found that nationally, 73.9 percent of high school students made it to graduation that year. The following year, the federal report said, 75 percent of students graduated.

Both reports relied on figures that the department collects from states, known as the Common Core of Data. The newspaper's report, however, tracked promotions by grade to also estimate the probability of graduation on time with a regular diploma.

Lori Mei, the head of testing for New York City's schools, defended the city's figures, saying New York tracked individual students and so did not rely on estimates, but produced actual graduation figures. In 2003, the city reported a 54.3 percent graduation rate.

But she also said that New York counted students who received high school equivalency diplomas as graduates. Excluding them would have produced a graduation rate of about 50 percent, she said. She said that in New York, virtually all the students who drop out never get past 9th or 10th grade, largely because of poor preparation in the lower grades.

In the coming days, the study, posted at edweek.org/dc06, will provide graduation rates for every school district in the country.

From the Christian Science Monitor...

US high school dropout rate: high, but how high?

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer WASHINGTON

The national dropout rate is notoriously hard to pin down, and the latest effort to do so - showing alarmingly low graduation rates in some parts of America - is likely to intensify the statistics wars.

Nearly 1 in 3 high school students in the Class of 2006 will not graduate this year, the Editorial Projects in Education (EDE) Research Center reported Tuesday.

The picture is worse for urban school districts, especially those serving poor students, the new study shows. Graduation rates in the largest school districts range from 21.7 percent in Detroit and 38.5 percent in Maryland's Baltimore County to 82.5 percent in Virginia's Fairfax County.

It's the first in an annual Graduation Project series, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The most detailed analysis covers the 2002-03 school year, using the most recent data available. A feature of the new study makes it possible for readers to create a report for each district, including comparisons with state and national figures.

"Our research paints a much starker picture of the challenges we face in high school graduation. When 30 percent of our ninth-graders [ultimately] fail to finish high school with a diploma, we are dealing with a crisis that has frightening implications for our ... future," says Christopher Swanson, director of the EDE Research Center.

The trouble is, it may not be accurate.

Some education groups praised the study as an important contribution to the field of dropout statistics. "It's going to help people understand that we can't deny or ignore this crisis anymore," says Ross Wiener of the Education Trust.

Others, who see such studies as overblown, were as quick to denounce it. "Swanson's measure is seriously inaccurate," says Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute and author of another study on dropout rates. "It's ... inappropriate for comparisons across states and school districts, the reason being that his formula is very much affected by how much grade retention there is in ninth and 10th grade. Any school that retains students in ninth grade is automatically going to look worse, whether graduation rates really are lower [there] or not," he said of the new report.

His own report, based on the US Education Department's National Educational Longitudinal Study, suggests that in 1992, 78 percent of students received a regular diploma, rising to 83 percent by 1994. For African-American students, whose graduation rates lag behind the US average, the figure rose from 63 percent to 74 percent over that period.

In fact, education experts say, none of the existing dropout-rate data gives a full picture. Governors are making changes that will yield better counts within a few years, they add.

Accurate reporting is important because so much education policy now turns on statistics. Misleading data can do harm, says Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy. "If you raise doubts about the effectiveness of the schools, you can put into disrepute people's efforts to reduce dropout rates. If you use less dramatic data, you can lull people into complacency." Accurate numbers are needed, he says, "before we can fashion some solution."