It’s no secret to Bluegrass Institute readers: we are upset with the way this state’s educators hid the fact that thousands of kids were being quietly pushed out the school door forever while those same educators consistently misled the public about the true crisis in high school graduation rates. We’ve been upset for a long time.
Now, the Kentucky School Boards Association reports on pages 8 and 9 of the January, 2011 edition of the “Kentucky School Advocate” that school districts are bracing for the fallout when more accurate graduation rate reporting finally hits the commonwealth in 2014.
Well, I am having a hard time sympathizing with Kentucky educators on this one.
Kentucky educators, you all went “wink, wink” year after year while you fed the citizens of this state inflated graduation rate figures that clearly were illusory.
The nonsense continued even after more accurate formulas to calculate and report this information were researched and made available by the National Center for Education Statistics way back in 2006.
The nonsense even continued after the Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts looked at the state’s dropout and graduation rate reporting in 2006 and said there was serious inflation in the graduation rates and a significant understatement of the real dropout rates.
Still, Kentucky’s educators just went “wink, wink.”
The latest graduation rate data release in 2010 finds the Kentucky Department of Education still using the very same, inaccurate reporting procedures that the Auditor identified four years earlier.
Furthermore, the department is only starting to get honest now because the feds finally forced them to do so.
In fact, due to the chronic lack of urgency on this issue, Kentucky will be either the last, or the second to last, state to finally provide its citizens with accurate graduation rate data.
So, don’t look for sympathy from me on this one. Our educators stood by and misled us for years, showing no sense of urgency to make improvements until the feds got nasty.
Even now, educators are fussing because the graduation rate formula chosen by the feds won’t count kids who take more than four years of high school to graduate as a success story.
While I certainly want our schools to hang in there for kids who need extra time, I think the feds believe it’s about time the taxpayer gets a little break in this. It costs a lot of extra money when kids have to be retained in schools for an extra year, or two. And, evidence we are starting to see from charter schools – such as this one in Chicago that took in a freshman class where only four percent were reading at grade level and four years later sent ALL of them, as graduates, to four-year colleges – shows that fussing about the federal requirements may be just that, mostly fussing.
Kentucky educators, you owe the commonwealth, and the thousands of kids you simply forgot, a huge apology. It’s time to stop whining and start winning for kids, instead.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Kentucky school districts bracing to face the music about fallacious graduation rates
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5 comments:
I agree, stop whining! Grade inflation is such an affront to the well being of a child. It's time for accountability in the education system.
Do you think that a student who graduates after 5 years instead of 4 years of high school should be considered a drop out. Do you think a student who is incapable of earning a standard diploma because a lack of intelligence or other factor should be considered a drop out? That is the effect of the cohort rating.
RE: Anonymous on January 26, 2011 10:30 PM
These questions are being asked across the country.
A 5-year graduate is definitely preferable to a dropout, but you need to understand that this extra year in school is expensive. Congress definitely does.
There are concerns that some of these students need extra time because of inefficiency in the school system and could have graduated on time with the proper instruction.
Do you think schools should be rewarded if they are not graduating students who are in this situation?
Personally, I'd like to see something like a 0.4 to 0.6 point credit for the 5-year graduate. That provides incentive to improve on-time rates while still providing some credit for the overtime grads.
So far as the lack of intelligence argument, there are indeed a small number of children in this category. Some are obvious, such as children with clinically determined challenges like Downs Syndrome. These children comprise a rather small proportion of the student body.
However, there are huge concerns that many kids today are being labeled as 'learning disabled' when the real issue is bad instruction. Also, the definitions of learning disabled don't mean students necessarily lack intelligence and are incapable of learning. It means they need special approaches, but are actually quite capable.
Even worse, there are too many teachers out there who jump on this excuse when the real problem is their own inadequacy. Charter schools show all the time that kids the traditional system has written off can indeed learn well. So, I'm not interested in rewarding that bad attitude.
Finally, we have to come to grips with the fact that a regular high school diploma should mean something that colleges and industry can grow to trust, again. We cannot water the regular diploma down, and we don't want to make alternative certificates attractive. I absolutely don't want kids winding up with an alternative certificate when they are actually capable of getting a regular diploma. And, I don't want to reward schools that write kids off, either.
I agree that schools should do everything possible for a student to graduate after four years, but if a student should need an extra year or semester they should not a dropout. A dropout is a child who decides to no longer attend school.
If we agree that there is a small number of students who fall into the category of severely handicapped then there should be a way to report these students so they do not count as drop outs.
RE: Anonymous on January 31, 2011 11:16 AM
You wrote:
"If we agree that there is a small number of students who fall into the category of severely handicapped then there should be a way to report these students so they do not count as drop outs."
I think the number of true, clinically determined students that fit this category is going to be quite low. Compared to the huge dropout gap we currently face, it won't fix much.
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