No Ground Floor For Reporting Graduation Rates: Why It Matters for Memphis and Shelby County

Today's New York Times is reporting on a story that I have long held to be an incredibly important one, not just for the country but especially for our local community.

Graduation rates are in essence a way to measure how well we've done from pre-Kindergarten forward educating a new generation of workers, parents, consumers and citizens. Telling the truth about graduation rates - and about proficiency on state and national standardized tests - is incredibly important for assessing the current and future conditions in our society - that is to say, how will these young people contribute? Are they likely to continue with their education? To become young and single parents or to delay parenthood? To get and keep well-paying jobs? To move out of Shelby County or to stay local?

7 in 10 students graduate on time from Memphis City Schools. 8 in 10 students graduate on time from Shelby County Schools. 9 in 10 students graduate on time in Tennessee. (TN Department of Education, 2007) According to the TCAP, 8 in 10 students are proficient in Reading and Math in Memphis and Shelby County - but according to the NAEP, only 1 in 4 are considered proficient. (Fortunately for Tennessee, the TCAP is used to determine compliance with No Child Left Behind - if the NAEP were used, we'd be in big trouble, as would many other states!)

From the New York Times article (commentary in italics):

• The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice. States are not required to use a uniform formula for reporting graduation rates, so there is no standard - no ground floor - for comparing achievement nationwide. Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education, has encouraged the U.S. Congress to pass a law requiring states to use a standardized, universal and uniform method to report graduation rates. We need to encourage this endeavor.
  
• Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law's mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school's performance can rise. In the push toward proficiency, we have lowered standards to make them more easily achievable by more students, giving the false appearance of "success" while cheating students - and ourselves and future generations - in the process.
  
• The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice. With more than 13,000 public school districts across the country - taking into consideration states' rights to set their own educational standards and the federal government's desire to provide oversight and promote achievement nationwide - there is an inherent tension between state and federal mandates. And unfortunately, a generation of students is getting lost in the process.
  
• Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law's mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school's performance can rise. Tennessee is taking steps toward dealing with the graduation rate crisis by eliminating the Gateway exam as an obstacle to completing high school. Instead it will be replaced during the 2009-2010 school year by end-of-course exams in content subject areas and calculated as a part of the student's final grade. However, changing the test does not imply fixing the system. More students graduating - the same as more students earning scores of proficient - does not indicate that they are prepared for further education or the workforce.
  

It used to be that a person could succeed in life in the U.S. with only a high school diploma, but this is not the case anymore. A higher education degree - Associate's or Bachelor's degree - is the new high school diploma. In conclusion, it is imperative that we keep a watchful eye on both graduation rates and achievement scores.