February 16, 2002

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES FEWER THAN YOU THINK

Jay Greene has bad news about high school graduation rates and nobody much wants to hear it.

In a report for the Manhattan Institute commissioned by the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), Greene carried out a simple calculation, based on data available from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Take the number of children entering eighth grade in the fall of 1993. Adjust for population changes between 1993 and 1998, when those children would graduate from high school; that's roughly the expected number of diplomas that would be awarded if nobody dropped out and everybody graduated on schedule. Divide the actual number of high school diplomas awarded in 1998 by the expected number; that's the graduation rate.

Nationally, Greene found, the graduation rate for the class of '98 was 74 percent, with 78 percent for white students, 56 percent for black students and 54 percent for Hispanic students.

For the same year, the national center reported the high school graduation rate at a much rosier 86 percent. The chief reason for the difference, Greene says, is that most national statistics include students who get GEDs or other credentials.

Greene's measure is better for estimating students' future opportunities. I wouldn't want anyone currently striving for a GED to give up, because if you're that person those letters on your resume might get you an interview instead of an automatic rejection. But in terms of income, GED recipients resemble high school dropouts more closely than they do graduates, and it's not a resemblance you want to cultivate. Median earnings for dropouts are barely half what they are for graduates.

Also, if the graduation rate is used as one measure of a school's or a district's effectiveness, giving the district credit for those of its students who dropped out is misleading if they subsequently earned a GED elsewhere.

State graduation rates vary enormously, from 53 percent in Georgia to 93 percent in Iowa. Colorado, at 70 percent, is 37th among the states (you can find the complete report is available at manhattan-institute.org on the Web).

States differ also in how much the rates vary among ethnic groups. Wisconsin, which ranks second highest in the nation overall at 87 percent, is dead last among the states in graduation rates for black students, at 40 percent. West Virginia is best in the nation for black students, at 71 percent, and 14th overall at 78 percent.

Colorado at 55 percent is middling for black students, and low for Hispanic students at 47 percent. The statewide figure is dragged down by Denver, which by Greene's calculations is a dismal 36 percent.

By comparison, the figures reported by the Colorado Department of Education for the class of 1998 would positively lull you into complacency; 69 percent for black students and 63 percent for Hispanics.

Either way, it is a human catastrophe and a political disaster.

There are dozens of different ways to measure graduation rates, and discrepancies aren't necessarily the result of deliberate efforts to sugarcoat unpalatable results.

But there are hints. Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of BAEO, says in the foreword to Greene's report that the authors of a federal study of education told him that Washington stopped reporting on graduation rates because it painted ``too bad a picture of productivity of the nation's public schools.''

The alliance inclines toward vouchers as one part of the remedy for what Caire calls ``horrific graduation rates'' in cities such as Cleveland or Milwaukee. But you needn't share that inclination to understand how urgent it is to remedy the situation Greene describes. To the contrary. Only the heartless can defend denying parents the means to escape the schools that doom their children to failure.

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