Louisiana Educator: 100% Error Rate on Student Transfers

Louisiana Educator: 100% Error Rate on Student Transfers:

100% Error Rate on Student Transfers

New Orleans Recovery District Found to Have a 100% Error Rate on Certain Transfer Data

Why is it important for student transfer data to be accurate? Because a school can falsely identify some of their dropouts as transfers and thereby boost their graduation rate. It seems that the New Orleans Recovery District has the highest rateof such "errors" in the state: 100%!

Here is how it works: The graduation rate (the percentage of students who start the 9th grade and graduate 4 years later) for each high school in the state is calculated each year and the percentage of students graduating helps determine the school performance score and also the letter grade assigned to a school. If some students who actually dropped out of school between 9th and 12th grades are misclassified as transfers, they do not count against a school in calculating the graduation rate. I personally do not agree with blaming schools for student dropouts and most of the other stuff that goes into calculating the school performance score. But I also don't believe that schools should be allowed to cheat on such statistics to improve their school letter grades.

How long has this misclassification trick been used? In a report issued by the LDOE several years ago titled: Louisiana's Louisiana Educator: 100% Error Rate on Student Transfers: