Gradual Progress with Graduation Rates.

A student either graduates or doesn’t.  Seems easy to determine.  Then we begin arguing about which students count, how long they should have to graduate, what alternative diplomas are legit, etc.  The most exasperating result is that pragmatists begin using aggregated counts to “estimate” graduation rate.  Then they get famous people to ballyhoo their rates.  For example, dividing the total number of graduates by the ninth-grade enrollment four years ago.  Simple.  Simply wrong. 

Trite Phrase Alert: Today’s world is different.  We can’t count graduates the way we have in the past.

True.  On-line courses, students leaving early to enroll in college, students moving to and from everywhere, students working or taking a sabbatical, alternative diplomas, self-paced programs, declining or growing enrollments, older students returning to earn a diploma, grade level classification of students by credits or years in high school, students who earn all credits but fail a graduation exam, hurricanes that move large numbers of families around, etc.

The EduGuru speaks: States now have longitudinal data systems (or are working on one) that can track individual students across schools and time.  Do it.

Comments

[Jason France]

I think before we develop a rate used across states is "What are we trying to measure?"

If we want to know how effective a school or school district, or state is at producing "graduates" is it fair to include students that transfer in from non-publics or other states after 9th grade when a significant amount of their schooling took place elsewhere?

Also, is it a fair measure to allow a school to transfer out their low performing students ot students with disicpline issues to alternative sites thus altering their cohort?

To me it seems like what people want to know is, if I send my child to this school, this district, this state, how well will they prepare my child to graduate on time? If students are commonly having to transfer from a school to another school, to a non-public, or getting incarcerted etc. then maybe that should be captured in whatever rate you come up with, and not "excused" as outside of a district's control.