Thursday, July 31, 2008
Editorial: Getting real on graduation
Virginia now can track students well enough to calculate real graduation rates and is looking to incorporate them into accreditation standards.
From the RoundTable blog
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Virginia is considering adding a high school's graduation rate to the state's accreditation standards, a logical next step in public school accountability.
It's a step Virginia can take because it now can measure graduation rates with an unheard-of degree of accuracy -- a significant technological advance.
But should it? And, if so, where should the benchmark be set and how should it be figured? These issues still need sorting.
The Virginia Department of Education proposes setting a graduation and completion rate of 80 percent starting with the 2009-10 academic year. Note that it is talking about "graduation and completion." Schools would get percentage points according to a weighted scale that would give 100 points for each student who graduates, and 60 to 75 points for each student who finishes with a lesser credential such as a GED.
Gov. Tim Kaine's office is reviewing the plan, and it will be subject to public comment before the state Board of Education adopts any change, probably later this year.
The issue is coming up now because in 2004 the state Education Department began tracking individual students by a 10-digit identifier that records their academic lives, from prekindergarten to graduation -- or nongraduation, as the case may be.
The Class of 2008 was the first tracked since entering high school. Without this detailed data, high schools' graduation rates have been estimates, a shaky base upon which to build reforms.
Given the state's new ability to figure the rates accurately, it would be almost unthinkable not to include them in state accreditation standards that are supposed to show whether schools measure up academically.
After all, schools that do well on overall student test results, yet lose a high percentage of poor performers to the ranks of drop-outs, are not getting the academic results their communities need.
Lowering drop-out rates is more than important. It's urgent in a city like Roanoke, which last year estimated its graduation rate at an abysmal 57 percent.
Still, schools don't all face the same challenges, nor do they have complete control over results. The state's plan to give partial credit to less-than-optimum success seems a sensible bow to reality.
As one school board member in Chesterfield County told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "We've found, even with all the strategies we've employed from year to year, a lot of this has to do with very individual problems" that take parental involvement to resolve.
Regrettably, the state cannot hold parents accountable as easily as public schools.
