What’s behind grad rate increase?
THE PUSH TO RAISE THE GRADUATION RATE: With President Barack Obama expected to trumpet the nation’s record high graduation rate of 82 percent during Tuesday’s State of the Union address [http://politico.pro/1Uzxobi], Morning Education looked at what brought about the recent growth in high school completion after decades of stagnation. Simple answer? Well, there isn’t one, but experts agree it has come about because of hard work at every level, from principals to governors to charities to the federal government. The federal role is debated, but there have been steps taken by both the George W. Bush and Obama White Houses to tackle the problem. Taking a lead from the National Governors Association, Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings set a uniform way for states to calculate graduation rates, a method credited with making them account for every student and other steps that the Obama administration built on, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Beyond the federal efforts, there was a growing understanding that, “there’s this subset of kids that are signalling early that they are in trouble and things like chronic absenteeism matter, and things like suspensions matter,” Balfanz said.
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— What did districts do? Some rolled out early warning systems to help identify struggling students through attendance records and other means years before they were due to walk across the graduation stage. Others created credit recovery programs and hired employees just to work with at-risk students. The period also saw a reduction of “dropout factory” schools with less than 60 percent of students making it to graduation day. (Alliance for Excellent Education says the number declined from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,040 in 2014.) Aside from accountability efforts, John Gomperts, president of America’s Promise, said having the two White Houses behind the problem helped make it a “thing” that the news media covered and communities responded to.
— Despite these gains, Gomperts’ organization and others leading the GradNation effort recently expressed concern [http://politico.pro/1O36RhB] the country for the first time in recent years wasn’t on track to meet their goal of a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020. There have also been questions about whether the bar is set high enough. The group Achieve noted in a recent report [http://bit.ly/1QBau1v] that about half of all states have multiple diploma options, and at least one option falls short of college-and-career ready expectations. “The rate keeps going up, but are we preparing more students for a life after high school? Or, are some states lowering the bar or making it easier to get a diploma?” questioned Chad Colby, a spokesman for Achieve.
— Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, high school graduation rates must be included in state accountability plans. But the Education Department needs to clarify a few issues, such as ensuring that, “graduation rates carry sufficient weight within accountability systems,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education.
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