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While the consequences of a low graduation rate are clear, a new report released May 30th by Education Week’s Project Graduation suggests that Connecticut’s official graduation rates are anything but.
ConnCAN’s comparison of the Project Graduation results to official Connecticut State Department of Education figures reveals significant discrepancies between this cumulative approach and the official rates:
The Project Graduation report comes on the heels of a national push to measure high school graduation rates more accurately, including the adoption of a “Compact on State High School Graduation Data” developed by the National Governors Association and endorsed by Alliance for Excellent Education, Association of American Colleges & Universities, Education Commission of the States, National Education Association, and The Education Trust. The compact calls for a uniform standard with three key characteristics: 1) four-year adjusted cohort graduation rates, 2) longitudinal tracking of individual students from preschool through postsecondary education, and 3) straightforward annual reports on rates of graduations, completions and dropouts. “This new report by Education Week confirms the need for more accurate and transparent information on the outcomes for kids in Connecticut’s public schools,” said Alex Johnston, executive director of ConnCAN. “It’s past time we developed a comprehensive and publicly-accessible system for tracking the progress of every public school student in our state.” # # # The Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN) is a statewide outreach, education, and research organization working to close Connecticut’s achievement gap. To learn more visit: www.conncan.org.
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A school system’s high school graduation rate is one of the most important indicators of its success. Research has demonstrated that, on average:
Drawing upon results from the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data (CCD) on the class of 2004, Education Week’s Project Graduation calculated graduation rates for 93 percent of all public school districts in the United States using the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) method. This approach represents graduating from high school as a four-year process from 9 through 12 grade, rather than a single event, and measures graduation based on receipt of a standard diploma rather than a GED or other equivalency degrees. (It is important to note that this methodology uses a baseline of all 9th grade students, counting transfers to parochial, private or other district schools as well as dropouts in the category of non-graduates of the system while counting transfers into the system as graduates.)