Graduation rates reported

Education Week has released a report on graduation rates, Diplomas Count, that attempts to use comparable data to determine a more accurate picture of graduation rates across the country. The Times covers the report in this article: A Third of U.S. Dropouts Never Reach 10th Grade

More than a third of high school dropouts across the nation leave school without ever going beyond the ninth grade, according to a report released here on Tuesday.

The report promises to be an annual survey.

Much of the data is locked behind an EdWeek subscription wall, so I cannot get my hands on the SFUSD data. They are also promising a detailed mapping tool later in the week that will expose data about individual districts. The California state wide graduation results are reported in Diplomas Count—California:

Student Group	California(%)	Nation(%)
All Students	71.0	69.6
By Gender
Male	66.3	65.2
Female	73.7	72.7
By Race and Ethnicity
American Indian/Alaska Native	44.9	47.4
Asian/Pacific Islander	81.3	77.0
Hispanic	60.1	55.6
Black (not Hispanic)	55.7	51.6
White (not Hispanic)	76.8	76.2
By Gender and Race and Ethnicity
Male
American Indian/Alaska Native	**	42.7
Asian/Pacific Islander	78.5	73.1
Hispanic	54.4	50.1
Black (not Hispanic)	50.4	44.3
White (not Hispanic)	73.6	72.4
Female
American Indian/Alaska Native	**	47.5
Asian/Pacific Islander	83.6	79.6
Hispanic	64.1	59.9
Black (not Hispanic)	59.2	57.8
White (not Hispanic)	79.3	77.9

We have blogged about the lack of baseline data about graduation rates. This study, as well as other features of NCLB, promises to fill in some of the missing data. But already the report is accompanied by breathless prose about the graduation crisis. Sorry, we do not know what graduation rates have been historically. So it is premature to say that a 1/3 drop out rate is a crisis or not. We may be doing better than ever for all we know. The terrible performance of some large urban districts is clearly not acceptable, even if it fits with historical norms. Establishing a baseline will enable districts to focus more clearly on the problem and improve performance. We can all get behind that.