BuckeyeBlog

The way states calculate their high school graduation rates has been big news the past few days. The New York Times carried a story about the US Department of Education’s plan to require all states to use the same formula for determining graduation and dropout rates. Their decision, according to the Times, is based on the widely accepted belief that states currently use inaccurate and misleading methods for determining these rates.

Recent graduates line up at South High School in Cleveland, last August. Research shows the city’s public school district had the third highest gap between urban and suburban graduation rates (35.9%) during the 2003-04 school year. Baltimore City’s public school system had the highest at 47%.
By Tony Dejak, AP

In a timely piece showing just how misleading many current graduation estimates are, USA Today has an article today based on the results of a new study by the EPE Research Center. The EPE report calculated the 2003-04 graduation rates for the 50 largest cities in the US. Cleveland had the third lowest percentage of graduates at 34.1% and Columbus was the fifth worst at 40.9%. Interestingly, the report also calculates the graduation rate gap between the each of the urban districts and their suburban counterparts. Columbus had the second largest gap of the 50 largest cities in the nation, coming up 42 percentage points lower than nearby suburban schools. Cleveland was third in the ranking with a roughly 36 percentage point gap.

For those who are interested, the Friedman Foundation has a collection of studies available on the taxpayer savings that are realized by school choice programs that lower the dropout rate and raise the graduation rate.

Tags: Education, School Choice

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 5:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.