The US Department of Education reported that the high school graduation rate rose to another historic high.
The rate represents those who graduated in four years. It does not include those who graduated in August or took five years to graduate. The overall graduation rate of the population 18-24 is higher than the four-year rate. Sometimes I think it was set at precisely four years to make the schools look bad. Personally, I think both rates should be reported at the same time: the four-year rate and the rate for the group 18-24, which shows a truer picture.
It should also be noted that the pressure to raise graduation rates as a marker of success may have inflated the graduation rate through such dubious means as “credit recovery,” in which students who failed a course may get full credit by taking a short-cut program, often online, often fraudulent in terms of learning.
It should also be noted that the District of Columbia has the lowest graduation rate of any state (DC is reported in federal data as both a state and a city). DC is widely hailed as one of the stars of the corporate reform movement. It has been under mayoral control since 2007, when Michelle Rhee took charge as chancellor. Bill Gates once said it would take a decade to know if “this stuff” works. The clock is ticking. Maybe he meant to say two decades or three.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Absolutely credit recovery has inflated the rate especially in high schools with low rates. It is one of the few places where schools can respond to pressure because it is under their control. But it does not serve students well.
You will see exactly the same phenomena with suspensions. Watch.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not sure how holding a hard line on credits, while watching a return to 50% drop-out rate would serve student well.
In 1995, Richard Mills created this mess in NYS by eliminating the local diploma and requiring a Regents diploma for ALL students, including SPEDs and ELLs. Just about every academic safety net was removed between then and now for our most needy students. How did these policies serve those students well? How does ignoring dyslexia serve students well? How did impossible Common Core tests serve students well by branding them as chronic failures?
High needs students come from families and communities drowning in hopelessness. As teachers we can no longer sell kids the American dream as income inequity continues to hollow out even the middle class. The underclass has NO chance – and they know it. So how does our corporate-political complex serve them well?
LikeLike
It is also important to note that Florida has a new law (I didn’t know about it until May 1st)! All students must pass four years of English however, if a student fails a semester and then passes the second semester with a C or better, the grades are averaged out to equal a D. So, yeah… Florida will definitely have a higher graduation rate! Will our graduates be literate? That is the question and the thing that keeps me up at night.
LikeLike
Why did they need a new law for that? D is passing, no?
LikeLike
They probably needed the law because HS grades are averaged numerically, and an “F” can range from 0 to 64. In a traditional 4 marking period course, a student needs 260 percentage points (4 X 65) to “pass” the course for credit. If a student has failed the first semester, they can be mathematically eliminated if their two marking period total is too low. If a student has earned 50 in MP #1 and only a 30 in MP #2 they would need to average 90 in the final two MPs to have a final passing average. (Note: many school districts have an “automatic 50” policy for the first marking period that completely undermines the work ethic that schools should be trying to instill). This is why so many marginal students give up in January – they know they can’t pass, regardless of their efforts. Florida has recognized that the current grading system breeds failure due to its archaic structure. There is a much better way, and FLA is on the right track. My district has solved this problem at the middle level with the most demanding promotion system in NYS. And it works! Kids have responded to a quarterly credit system that is more logical and doable than the traditional yearly average model. We call it “Fresh Starts” be cause it resets the opportunities for academic success every 10 weeks. Credit recovery is limited to only one marking period and summer school has been devalued appropriately. Inquiries welcomed!
LikeLike
Points to the insanity of using grades as an indicator of “learning”.
LikeLike
I’d like to think you jest when you say “Points to the insanity of using grades as an indicator of ‘learning’.”
This is flawed logic because it takes for granted that all teachers hand out grades like free candy that students did not earn by proving they learned the work that was taught by the teacher.
It was my experience as a teacher for thirty years (knowing many other teacher), that most teachers don’t give grades as gifts. They make students earn them and what students earn indicates how much effort they put out to learn what was taught.
Then an individuals memory also plays a role because some of what a child learns in school will be forgotten as time goes by.
Do you know how memory works in the human brain? Human memory is very flawed. We can even manufacture fake memories and believe they are real and revise others that aren’t true to the real event. And when we don’t use a memory, over time, it can be detached from the network of memories in our brain so it is not available when we need it.
For instance, if a forty year old is stopped on the street and asked a question about California and he doesn’t know if California is a state or a city, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t taught the answer to that question. It just means they probably forgot what they were taught more than once by more than one teacher.
Grades that students earn from teachers (focus on the word “earn” and not “give”) are an indication of the effort the child made to learn from the teacher for that grading period but does not indicate in anyway what learning they will retain in long term memory.
In addition, there is the flaws created by short term memory when we sleep and the brain goes into an automatic process to decide what is important enough to move from short term memory to long term. How many times have children forgotten they were assigned homework because it didn’t survive that process when they were sleeping that night? The next day, the child woke up and the memory of that homework wasn’t in long term memory. It had been deleted.
LikeLike
No, Lloyd, I jest not!
As a means of communicating what a student appears to have learned grades are a simplistic notion at worst, utter nonsense at best.
It is almost impossible for most folks to reject culturally embedded practices such as grades. They appear as a natural and normal part of societal discourse and activities. You state that “grades that students earn from teachers. . . are an indication of effort the child made. . . “. Not in my experience (nor anyone else’s as far as that goes). Some students didn’t have to expend hardly any thought or energy and got “As”. And others who worked their butts off and were lucky to receive (not earn) a “D” or “C”. Grades have always lacked consistency in meaning from one student to the next, from one class to the next and especially from one teacher to the next.
While most believe they know what an “A” or “C” or even, god forbid an “F” for FAILURE entails and/or means, it is an illusory belief with no foundation whatsoever in rationo-logical thought when one realizes all the various meanings, activities, conditions of, differing implementations of, etc. . . .
In other words grades and grading practices are stinking excrement of bovine origin and should have no place in public education (don’t care what private schools do) as grades serve to discriminate against many and a few reap the benefits of being on the “top” of the grading scale (no matter what that scale is.)
Should the government through public schools be in the business of discrimination against some due to inherent/inherited mental traits and differing family and environmental upbringings??? Those mental traits/abilities/capabilities being, in essence no different than skin color, gender, and/or sexual orientation which have been adjudicated as being wrong to discriminate by?
LikeLike
I disagree with your thinking about grades. The way I graded students was based on the amount of work assigned and not test scores. It was possible to earn an A in my class and fail the one test of the year, the final exam and any student going into the final exam that was earning an A was excused from taking the final exam. In fact, it was possible for every student to earn an A in my class and the only reason everyone didn’t was becasue many of my students didn’t do enough work or no work and read none of the assignments.
Doing the work that is part of learning and earning grades for that work based on completion and correctness of assignments is the same as getting paid for a job.
Should we pay everyone that has a job the same amount of money each month no matter how many hours they work or what kind of work it is? That way a gardener that spends two hours a month mowing one lawn ends up getting paid the same as an aeronautical engineer with a PhD in her field who works 100 hours a week to build the next generation space ship that will carry humans to Mars.
When my students did group work and earned points for the completed group project, it was up to them how they divided up the points the assignment was worth. If the group assignment was valued at 1,000 points and there were five members and 200 points each would have earned every member of the group an A if they earned full credit for the final product and presentation, what do you think happened when the group only earned 700 points for the project because the final wasn’t complete and wasn’t of the best quality? Some members walked away with an A and some took a B, C, D or Failing grade after the group negotiated and divided up the points. And students that didn’t earn enough points for an A were always allowed to defend themselves and ask for a higher grade but no one ever did. It was my policy that when a student in a group didn’t earn enough points for a passing grade on that group work, I called those students up for a one-to-one private conversation to ask them if they thought it was fair and in every instance without exception they said yes, because they didn’t do any of the work that was supposed to be their share of the group.
I see grades as a pay check for the long hours some students put in to do the work, study and learn but when a student doesn’t apply themselves, they do not deserve credit for that class. When a worker doesn’t do the work assigned to him in the workplace, what does management usually do — they fire that person and hire someone to replace him expecting that new worker to work.
In education, it is the job of the teacher to teach and help students who want to learn and it is the job of the student to do the work that was designed to help them learn.
I hate tests and don’t think children should be judged from the results of tests. Grades should be earned based on work done and the quality of that work.
Every assignment in the classes I taught was worth points and the total of those points for all the assignment translated into a grade. If a student eared 75% of the total number of points, that student earned a C for her effort. When a student earned more than 90% of the total points, that student earned an A or better, but there were always a few students that took advantage of challenging extra credit assignments knowing they didn’t have to do that work to earn an A, and those few would end a semester with 120% or more of the required work and end up with an A+. It was their choice.
Taxpayers pay for every child to have an opportunity to earn an education and grades are a way to prove that child is doing the work that leads to learning. Students that failed my classes often did little or no work and just warmed a seat in my classes when they were not absent. It would not be fair to the students that worked to give the students that refused to work the same credit for completing that class just because they showed up.
LikeLike
“It would not be fair to the students that worked to give the students that refused to work the same credit for completing that class just because they showed up.”
Quite correct, Lloyd, that is, within the grading scheme as we have known them. I’m talking about stepping outside the “grade” mentality to something better, more fair and just. Grades are neither fair nor just as we use them.
“To every season turn turn turn. . . .” It’s time to turn the season on grades and grading as they have far outlived their rationo-logical rationales (or is that irrational-illogical rationales?).
LikeLike
Ah, but when I was teaching, each teacher was responsible for their own grading policy.
There was no mandated grading policy that all teachers had to use. Most of the teachers I knew and worked with used grading systems similar to the way I graded, but there was a few that gave nothing but As and/or Bs to every student and then there was one or two that excused students for half of the assignments — like a handicap in golf or bowling — and only doing half the work assigned resulted in earning an A.
I knew only one teacher in my thirty years in the classroom where every student in his class earned an A or a B. He let the students grade their own work and do anything they wanted. He never assigned any work. As an English teacher, he’d assign a story to read and then let the students do whatever they wanted for that assignment even if it was just drawing a picture.
He also never graded the student work because he let them grade whatever they did.
Then when he had to turn in grades, the grade the students earned depended on where they landed on his roll sheet. The first student was given an A. Number 2 was given a B. Number three got an A. Number 4 got a B, etc.
But, I REPEAT, most teachers assigned the grades that were earned based on the work done and/or the quality of work turned in.
LikeLike
“Atlanta Public Schools (APS) Credit Recovery program provides an online opportunity for APS high school students to engage in a self-paced recovery for courses that they have failed to need recover to meet graduation requirements. Students will have access to courses 24hrs a day, 7 days a week from anywhere that a student has internet access. Students will be allowed to take up to one full unit of credit per semester. The district-wide tool for credit recovery is Pearson’s Gradpoint.”
LikeLike
So…..why have teachers in the first place???
LikeLike
CA has no more high school exit exam! So everyone gets to graduate.
The CAHSEE was cancelled last year, so EVERYONE FROM 2008 TO PRESENT IS GETTING A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA!
Thanks to Gov. Brown and NO accountability or proficiency non-standards.
LikeLike
There were no hs exit exams whatsoever when I was in hs in the 1960’s. Not sure I get your drift.
LikeLike
Not completely accurate. No exit exam, but their are the a-g requirements for graduation, which are the minimum requirements for entering the University of California system. That means everyone must pass advanced mathematics.
This is where the fraudulent credit recovery system comes in. There is no way 90% of California students can legitimately pass the equivalent of Algebra II nor should they need to. So bad law is enforcing bad ethics.
It is definitely time for education policy to be run by professional educators and parents at local schools. Top down education run by politicians and businessmen is a disaster.
LikeLike
Classic Campbell’s Law. Grad rates became the focus…and now they rise every year. Why? Districts are focused on making sure they hit targets.
Have schools changed in quality? Not really.
We know many states have added more types of diplomas. And that these comparative rates are meaningless between states BECAUSE of the wide variation in qualifications for graduation.
For example, in Oregon we had only counted a single type of diploma until recently. Just last year they added in Modified Diploma’s from special ed (why didn’t they do that before? no one knows). But Oregon remains with only 1 approach to graduation. Many states have more. Like North Carolina.
So does it make sense to compare Oregon to North Carolina? Not at all. But that never prevents US DOEd from reporting numbers – no matter how misleading they might be.
And I’ve seen comment bemoaning different types of diploma’s. I firmly disagree. Society has changed to where kids simply can’t get jobs without saying “I have a diploma”. Schools are therefore banning employment when they prevent types of diploma’s. We must be more sensitive to realities.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I completely agree. Even 50 yrs ago when I graduated hs, a diploma was essential for the most mundane of starter jobs, so hs’s bent over backwards to find ways to help almost-passing students find ways to get there. OTOH, when my dad was in school in the 1930’s, you could enter the steel mills at 14 w/8th-gr completion, which he & many agrarian peers did, making the leap from farmlife to industry. The ed prerequisite was essentially adequate reading & writing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not to run on. But want to offer a second thought.
On this issue I’m reminded of the man who comes upon a drunk looking for his keys under a streetlight. Man asks him where he lost them. Drunk points up the street. So the man asks why he’s looking here. The drunk answers “because the light is better”.
Graduation rates are a classic metric problem – clean, easy numbers that don’t mean anything. But it’s great to search amongst them because the light is better. Unfortunately, the keys to making society better will be found where the light isn’t so clear and easy – they’ll be found where the answers are hard.
LikeLike
I remain everlastingly suspicious of statistics. Are they starting with the roster of 9th graders entering high school and seeing how many are left to graduate?? If students drop out but we claim they have transferred or moved what effect does that have. I see, everywhere, much much smaller 12th grade classes than 9th grade classes, or 8th grade or 7th grade classes. How account for this?
LikeLike
Don’t forget that some states have manipulated their rating through changing cut scores.
LikeLike
Making up failed high school classes in summer school is also another shortcut to credit recovery. I often taught make up English classes during summer school, and we had to cut a lot of material that would have been taught during the regular school year.
Compare a full semester during the school year — about twenty weeks (90 school days) — to a summer school class that lasts about six weeks for four days a week (we had Fridays off). The summer school class was often two hours long compared to one hour of class a day for the regular year. That means 48 hours of instruction for one class during a summer session ended up being equal to about 90 hours of instruction for a semester during the regular school year and earned the same credit.
These English make up classes were restricted to mostly incoming 12th graders so they could make up classes that were necessary to qualify for high school graduation. Even then, each summer class started with about 50 students a class and by the end of summer, less than 20 students stuck it out to finish and make up the lost credits.
In addition, the contract that the teachers’ union negotiated between the teachers and the district only applied to the regular school year. Summer school did not count, and teachers were paid a fraction of the money they earned for a similar amount of work during the regular school year to teach summer school. Of course, we only taught two, two hour sessions a day in summer school instead of 5 or 6 one hour sessions a day.
LikeLike
As USA birth rates drop for twelve years, high school graduation rates rise.
Why?
LikeLike
The birth rate and high school graduation rates are two different numbers for two different things? They are ratios of a total. That means the ratio of births can drop while the high school graduation rates increases.
You are comparing apples to oranges. For instance, if fewer apples are produced one year, that has little or nothing to do with the number of oranges produced the same year?
A better question would be to ask why Caucasians in the U.S. are having fewer babies than minorities are?
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/05/17/explaining-why-minority-births-now-outnumber-white-births/
LikeLike
At the risk of sounding argumentative, most of the comments here suggest that the whole matter of credit recovery, summer school, and any other way we get students a diploma is simple. It is just a way to get figures to look good and comply with regulations. Unfortunately, the truth is more nuanced. If a teacher or school is convinced that the deck is stacked against s student, what do you do? Not every student is cut out to attend college, and some students who are unable to pass a course like Algebra 2 face not getting a diploma. Teachers who do not feel that it is fair to created a person “damned” by the system invent ways to make those kids fit into the “saved” group (thanks Jon Lovell). Kids get credit for being as good as they can be. Do they know Alg2? Of course not, for it was not appropriate to teach them at that level before they had mastered pre-requisite skills.
So what are we to do when people in the political system decide that the only thing between children and a good education is their teachers?
LikeLike
Agree Roy. Is the alternative (No CR, No SS, No AIS, No C-50) high school that produces 50% drop-outs really the better option? I have always felt that family culture and community culture set the real limits for what any school can require or enforce. The big dog is never wagged by his tail.
LikeLike
One of the real problems with graduation rates is structural – and systemic. Requiring a student to have a final passing average, after four marking periods (40 weeks), plus a fifth marking period represented by a final exam is simply bad practice – it just doesn’t work for enough kids. Even college success (credits) only requires a concerted 16 week effort. The long term, 40 week, goal for 14 and 15 and 16 year old kids coming out of middle and junior high schools with half-baked promotion policies should come to end.
There is a better way.
LikeLike
Meanwhile back in Louisiana, the data stage is set for yet another miracle. The savior this time: Act 833. Act 833 is a new law that tugs at the heart because on the surface it levels the playing field for students with disabilities by allowing them to obtain a high school diploma; a diploma that, in terms of the accountability system, is indistinguishable from other diplomas (Louisiana has three different diplomas). However, what is not obvious is that the IEP team can waive all or most of the requirements to obtain that diploma—test score pass thresholds, course pass marks, minimum marks to pass a course, etc.
In terms of graduation rates, this should allow Louisiana to ascend straight to the top of the ranking because now that every single child can obtain a diploma, including those with diagnosed cognitive limitations of the most severe/profound.
The results to come: near perfect graduation rates.
The reality: Campbell’s law strikes again and the use of graduation rates to assess how our schools are doing will have become so distorted they will no longer serve as a decent metric.
Prior to Act 833, a Certificate of Achievement (or COA) could be obtained but was = 0 points.
After Act 833, the same situation produces 100 accountability points.
Surely, there will not be much pressure to go for the 100, right?
LikeLike
Would you prefer those severely handicapped receive no diploma?
Its not like they are being given a golden ticket.
Why do you need graduation rates as a “decent metric” for assessing how your schools are doing? It sounds like LA is actually applying some compassion and common sense to their ed policies.
LikeLike
Rage, I agree. There has to be a path to graduation for all students, but no fraudulence.
LikeLike
Diplomas and tests should be specific in the information they communicate. Rage is correct. Our most adept students can fail and start over within weeks or days. Diplomas should reflect how many times a student had to start over, what courses were mastered, and much more specific information that would allow a prospective employer or academic institution to know the kid. Tests should do this as well. If I wish to be a realtor, I take a test that says I have tested into the club. Same for a doctor, but a doctor can get a certificate allowing him to proceed along a specific path in medicine. These professions volunteer to take the tests. This sort of testing would not be punitive where teachers and students are concerned. Both would be in the same boat,paddling toward the same shore.
LikeLike
I have taught high school social studies for 20 straight years on California. Graduation rates are an absolute joke. At my school seniors are simply shuffled through the process whether they have learned anything or not. The latest tactic my school used is to give seniors who fail a core class in the 2nd semester (preventing them from graduating) a one or two day online class through APEX Learning — this is done between the time when final grades are given and the graduation ceremony actually occurs (about 7 days) so that even the most pathetic student shares the stage with the kids who actually did the work. When I questioned this tactic with our admin that told me flat out that if I had a problem with this practice they would simply change my teaching schedule; when I asked why this practice was not in our WASC report there was no response. Teachers who try to told the line and raise the academic bar are the enemy. School officials have their official spin on things but it is all a scam. . . the bottom line is to just shuffle everyone through and fail no one, especially when it is a senior that will not graduate. And the saddest thing is that I am supposedly at a very good school (9 out of 10 API ranking) so I cant even image what sorts of shenanigans go on at the not so good schools.
LikeLike
What’s the name of your high school. Because California requires school report cards be made available online, then anyone can check the size of the freshman class compared to the numbers that graduate in 12th grade four years later to easily discover if every student graduates even if they don’t deserve it.
For instance, the high school where I taught for the last 16 years of the thirty was a public school teacher in California, the 12th grade graduating class was always much lower than the entering 9th grade class four years earlier.
LikeLike