Kentucky’s official dropout rates considered “generous”

– Many experts not fooled

It looks like high school dropouts are on a lot of peoples’ minds right now. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that many experts looking at dropout rates for Kentucky and Ohio consider the official rates to be “generous.”

In other words, experts consider the real situation to be definitely worse than the Kentucky Department of Education wants to admit.

The Enquirer quotes Cincinnati State spokesman Bob White as saying, "Everybody involved in this knows that the problem is worse than many of the published numbers. It really has to do with the way Ohio collects its data. Kentucky has a different system. You can tweak it any way you want."

Well, Kentucky has been tweaking, but that isn’t going to pass muster much longer. The Enquirer also reports, “At the urging of the nation's governors, the U.S. Education Department has ordered all states to use the same graduation rate methodology by 2012.” Why we have to delay to learn the truth isn’t mentioned, but we have talked about this extensively in this blog.

Why not ask your state school board member why they are delaying going to a better formula for two more years. We have the data to calculate better graduation rates with that formula now. Why are we delaying until the feds make us do it?