States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School: "Dropout epidemic"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
By SAM DILLON
Published: March 20, 2008

....Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.

California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.

The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

“I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race,” said Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools. “Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/education/20graduation.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[HereSince1628]

1. Apparently no interest in this topic...here's a link to earlier thread with no hits.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x9402

This seems to be yet more evidence of significant problems with NCLB. STATES(!) feel compelled to lie about the numbers they are cooking off to the Feds.

This is the sort of shit that made the USSR completely disfunctional (dysfunctional if you prefer).

[DeepModem Mom]

4. You're right, Here. We tend to focus on events of the day and lose sight of...

things happening beneath the surface, many of which are more important. The consequences of ignorance and lack of education in our citizenry is a frightening thing to think about.

[Igel]

10. One problem noted in a similar article from maybe a year

ago is that there's no evidence that the drop-out rate's changed since the '70s. The numbers are too soft. Estimates over time based on indirect data were reported to have been about steady for the last 30-40 years.

States were misrepresenting the drop-out numbers long before NCLB. Sometimes it's just hard to know what the numbers really are--the kid that's leaving your school may be moving, he may drop out, he may get his GED early. But partly it's politics--no mayor wants to admit that "his" high school system has a 55% graduation rate when he's running on a platform that includes touting how much the additional 10% school budget he wrangled in his first term helped. No governor wants to admit a low graduation rate, scaring away companies that might be thinking about moving to the state. It's shameful, really.

[silverweb]

11. It's not lack of interest.

It's the obvious knowledge that it's not going to improve until our government changes.

Further details about the deepening morass that is NCLB and its aftermath reveal nothing really new and nothing that we can fix right now.

Everything -- and I mean everything -- hinges on the outcome of November 4, 2008.

[grasswire]

2. important stuff

We are falling behind.

[dkf]

3. What happens to these dropouts?

Do we have any studies on this?

I am absolutely appalled.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. An interesting question -- what are the societal consequences? nt

[kickysnana]

8. Here are some:

Nephew class of 95 #1 - got GED assistant manager of a trendy supper club. Married 1 child.
Niece class of 96 #1 - got GED attending college while working as an HR manager in a midsize company. Married one child. May switch major from Education to business.
Niece #2 class of 2000- got GED finishing her degree in anthropological sociology and working as a hostess in the supper club above
Nephew #1 - class of 2006 got GED is working as an assistant manager for Slumberland; planning to go to school for a career in video arts.

[bluestateguy]

6. At least when a lot of kids drop out, you don't have an overcrowding problem

And all the dropouts can just be put in prison, which creates jobs in prison construction and corrections.

Yes, I was being sarcastic.

[kickysnana]

7. Self delete posted in wrong place

[flashl]

9. School officials cooking the 'books' has been presented to the public numerous times.

Studies and news stories from every possible angle repeat the same data and there's been little concern.