Harmony Charter School Graduation Rates: Fact or Fiction?
Evidently, the CEO of Harmony Charter Schools will testify today that Harmony Science Cademy Schools in Texas have a 100% graduation rate. We often hear charter school operators make this claim. Are charters schools really that great? Should we open more charter schools to increase the graduation rate? And what, exactly, are these schools doing to have such extraordinary graduation rates.
When the state calculates graduation rates, it uses the number of students in the 9th grade cohort as the denominator (see http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2010/glossary.html from TEA and look under completion rates for the complete definition). This makes complete sense. To calculate a graduate rate, you start with the number of 9th grade students and then follow them over time. Except that students are removed from the denominator if they transfer to another school or leave public schools for a variety of reasons.
As shown in Table 1 below, we see that there were 192 students enrolled in Harmony charter schools in the 9th