Friday, March 28, 2008

Graduation Rates - New requirements for real grad rates 

Michael Ciamarra

Filed As:  Education (k-12)

Alabama like most states keeps two sets of records when it comes to high school graduation rates. Alabama is credited by the No Child Left Behind Act for graduating 82 percent of their students. The rates of calculation are similar and used by most other states as well. While not an exact science, other outside studies place Alabama's real graduation rates in the 50 to 60 percent range. The Public Affairs Council of Alabama (PARCA) calculates the graduation rate at 69 percent. Some areas of the state under performing compared with the state average as calculated by PARCA. For example, the Mobile County school system, one of the largest in Alabama only graduates 63 percent of its students compared with the state average of 69 percent. To pick up on the Newt Gingrich commentary on the last example, if only 63 percent of students are graduating from the Mobile County school system on time, that means that a full 37 percent are failed by this district. Cheating the students is wrong. Imagine a private service company taking money from its custommers and then failing to serve 37 percent of them, it would be closed in a few short days.Fortunately, Alabama's state board of education and some thoughtful state legislators also agree that those children are being cheated. Tougher graduation requirements are being proposed that would give more realistic graduation rates and give students a more rigorous curriculum. The Birmingham News gives us some insights further on this developing story here.

• posted by Michael Ciamarra
• 11:50 am
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