Truth, Trust, Deeds!

Editorial

Honest Data on High School Dropouts

Published: 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.