Graduation Rates

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

Urban Institute writes another chapter in debate over graduation rates -

Christopher Swanson, a research associate for the Washington D.C. -based 
Urban Institute, has developed a new and he thinks simpler measure for 
determining high school graduation rates.

He calls it the Cumulative Promotion Index or CPI and bases it on the 
number of students enrolled each year and the number who receive diplomas 
after four years.

Swanson, who has written extensively on the controversy over determining 
graduation rates in papers published by the institute over the last year, 
concludes in his latest paper that the national high school graduation rate 
is 68 percent.

He also looks at racial data and finds that it shows some "tremendous 
gaps." His findings:
   * "Students from historically disadvantaged minority groups (American 
Indian, Hispanic, Black) have little more than a fifty-fifty chance of 
finishing high school with a diploma."
   * "By comparison, graduation rates for whites and Asians are 75 and 77 
percent nationally."
   * "Males graduate from high school at a rate 8 percent lower than 
female students."
   * "Graduation rates for students who attend school in high poverty, 
racially segregated, and urban school districts lag from 15 to 18 percent 
behind their peers."
   * " A great deal of variation in graduation rates and gaps among 
student groups is found across regions of the country as well as the states."
Swanson notes that California uses the National Center for Education 
Statistics formula for calculating graduation rates, which calculates 
diploma recipients as a percent of students leaving high school over a 
four-year period. He calls that a "synthetic" graduation rate and notes 
that the state cannot disaggregate graduation rates for subgroups.

California Department of Education officials have been contending that the 
only way the state will arrive at a true graduation rate is to complete the 
development of the student tracking system which is currently being worked on.

For more on this report and Swanson's other writing on graduation rates, 
visit www.urban.org

*
This article is reprinted with permission from Education Beat, 
www.politicalpulse.com


If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much. - Marian 
Wright Edelman