Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
High school graduation rates are up, but why? Tonight, PBS NewsHour looks at charges schools are increasing numbers artificially by “labeling dropouts as transfers, encouraging home schooling for their most troubled students, or creating alternative systems such as computer-based ‘credit recovery’ courses.”
The show also examines small theme-based schools in New York City and early college programs in Texas that seem to be getting more students to a valid high school diploma.
U.S. high schools are graduating more students and could reach a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020, according to Building a Grad Nation by America’s Promise Alliance.
Gains were strong for minority students: African-American students saw a 6.9 percent increase in graduation rates from 2006 to 2020, and Hispanic students had a 10.4 percent increase.
In the Davis Guggenheim documentary “Waiting for Superman,” Americans learned about “dropout factories,” high schools where fewer than half of all students graduated on time. Bob Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University professor, coined that term — and in the report out Monday, he found that the number of “dropout factories” has declined. In 2011, according to the report, there were 583 fewer such schools than there were in 2002. “The schools have gotten better, and some have closed,” Balfanz said.
In 2002, 46 percent of black students and 39 percent of Hispanics attended a high school where most students failed to graduate. By 2011, that fell to 25 percent for backs and 17 percent for Hispanics.
President Obama’s new College Scorecard site, which helps students and parents evaluate a college’s cost, graduation rate and default risk, is nothing new, say critics. Some of the data is old, most has been available from other sources and college shoppers can’t factor in family income to get an accurate “sticker price,” reports the New York Times.
Washington D.C’s federally funded school vouchers produced $2.62 in benefits for every dollar spent, concludes a study in Education Finance and Policy by Patrick Wolf and Michael Q. McShane.
More than 60 private schools in D.C. accept students with Opportunity Scholarships, which are awarded by lottery to low-income students. Students who won a scholarship were 12 percent more likely to graduate from high school compared to the control group of lottery losers, a U.S. Education Department study found. That increased graduation rate will generate large returns, Wolf and McShane write.
After the program’s five-year pilot run ended in 2009, Congress and President Obama cut funding and closed it to new students. President Obama agreed to reauthorize the scholarships as part of the 2011 budget compromise.
If Congress had “redirected money from the bloated and ineffectual DCPS for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, then the cost of the program would have been nothing, and the benefits substantial,” writes Matthew Ladner on Jay Greene’s Blog.
The on-time high school graduation rate hit 78.2 percent in 2010, the highest in a generation and up 2.7 points in a year.
“If you drop out of high school, how many good jobs are there out there for you? None,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told AP.
While 93.5 percent of Asian-American students and 83 percent of whites complete high school in four years, that drops to 71.4 percent for Hispanics and 66.1 percent for blacks.
State graduation rates ranged from 57.8 percent in Nevada to 91.4 percent in Vermont.
Comparing graduation rates to any year before 1992 is impossible, writes RiShawn Biddle. The data collection method changed significantly. Some states and districts are reporting very dodgy data. Connecticut reported a 98 percent graduation rate for the class of 2010, which NCES refused to accept. The District of Columbia claimed “only one percent of students officially drop out over a four-year period.” The key word is “officially.”
Only 72 percent of students in the class of 2011 earned a diploma in four years, according to the U.S. Education Department.
Iowa had the highest graduation rate at 88 percent with Wisconsin and Vermont at 87 percent and Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas at 86 percent.
The District of Columbia’s four-year graduation rate was 59 percent, the lowest in the country, notes Dropout Nation. Only 60 percent of black, Latino, and Native American students graduated on time. In Nevada, the black on-time graduation rate was 43 percent, the worst in the nation. Montana and Texas are “the only states in which four out of every five black freshmen in their respective Classes of 20111 graduated on time.” Minnesota had the largest racial achievement gap with a 49 percent on-time graduation rate for blacks and 84 percent of whites
Nationwide, 79 percent of Asian-American students and 76 percent of non-Hispanic whites finished high school in four years.
If a student needs five years to earn a high school diploma — and really earns it — that’s OK by me. I worry that “portfolio review” and “credit recovery” scams will pump up graduation rates.
Some 21 percent of jobs require “middle” skills — more than a high school diploma, but less than a bachelor’s degree. Community colleges can help 1.5 million unemployed Americans bridge the skills gap, researchers say. But colleges will have to balance open access with the push for higher graduation rates.
Orlando’s Valencia College graduates nearly thee times more students than the average at large urban community colleges. How do they do it?
College instructors need to design courses to meet the needs of “new traditional” students, adults who’ve been out of high school for years, writes a community college professor.
Only 52 percent of black male and 58 percent of Latino male ninth-graders graduate from high school four years later, compared to 78 percent of white males, reports the Schott Foundation in The Urgency of Now. Black male graduation rates are improving, but not fast enough, according to the foundation, which calls for schools to focus on the neediest students.
Recent Comments