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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > March > 31 > Entry
Grad rates: simple question, complicated answer
It sounds like a simple question — what is Dayton’s graduation rate?
But graduation rates are never simple.
This began Monday when my editor came across a wire story about a study on graduation rates. Could we insert Dayton’s graduation rate into the story for a local perspective?
Well, that depends.
You see, there are several methods for calcualting graduation rates. If the study’s method is different from the state’s method, it would be an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Ohio’s approach to calculating graduation rates is to create an estimate based on the number of students who enter and leave each grade level as they move through high school. The state does not track each individual student to determine how they exit the education system.
With the class of 2008, Ohio will move to a new system, which is expected to drive graduation rates down but is considered more accurate, as part of a national effort to try to standardize the rates across states.
And that’s where things start to get hairy.
In Sunday’s Columbus Dispatch, my education writing counterpart, Jennifer Smith Richards, did a good job explaining what is going on in Ohio on this issue.
The good news is Ohio wants to move toward a more accurate calculation method. The bad news is how it will complicate things.
You see, because the new method is tougher and graduation rates will go down, Richards reports, the state is likely to lower its target that school districts are required to hit. For years, the state report card has required a 90 percent graduation rate. That is expected to be lowered. How much lower is yet undetermined.
And just to make things a little harder to follow, graduation rate is the only data in the state report card that is two years behind. So this new calculation begins for the class of 2008 but it will be two years before it hits the report card.
Schools already are grumbling about the headaches this will create. Consider Dayton. It’s graduation rate is up significantly from about 50 percent five years ago to almost 80 percent today. But the new calculation method will almost certainly mean that rate will go down, which is hard to explain to residents and voters.
Dayton has been shooting hard to try to hit the 90 percent target, but now that target will change for this year’s class. And with just a couple months before those kids are schedule to graduate, we still don’t yet know what the new target will be.
I think this answer was a little more than my editor bargained for.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Schools and Politics, Teaching and Learning
Comments
By jkj
April 2, 2008 10:16 AM | Link to this
i think the real problem is that the dayton school system doesn’t want to know it’s real graduation rate for fear they might fall into the bottom with some of the other major cities. to go up to 80%, while good, still shows there is a large window for improvement. i’d like to see the nation’s private schools graduation rates put up against the government school’s rates…those would be some eye-openings statistics!By Oldprof
April 1, 2008 11:14 AM | Link to this
I’ll note that higher education in Ohio is now able to track individual students, and the results will help in Stickland/Fingerhut’s refined funding formulae. Why can’t Ohio Board of Education track individual students? I think the answer’s name is Zelman.By Mary
April 1, 2008 7:43 AM | Link to this
Scott, I am just impressed your editor seems to care about graduation rates outside the context of athletics. Newspapers have done such a thorough job reporting height, weight, and publishing numerous photos of hairy armpits on basketball players. I am glad at least one editor recognizes it might be good to understand graduation rates and academics a little better in the education environment.