Graduation rates often overstated, study finds

By Fredreka Schouten
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Many states dramatically overestimate the number of students who graduate from high school, according to a recent study by an education advocacy group.

North Carolina topped the list of states that the Education Trust says overstated graduation rates. The state told the federal government that more than 92 percent of its public school students graduated in 2002. The Education Trust says fewer than two-thirds of the state's students graduated.

States also reported wide variations in graduation rates, from a high of 97 percent in South Dakota to just 63.7 percent in Nevada.

All 50 states had to report graduation rates to the U.S. Department of Education this year under the requirements of a sweeping school-reform law that President Bush signed in January 2002.

The law, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, holds schools accountable for improving the test scores of all students — regardless of race, ethnicity, family income, English proficiency or disability. Graduation rates are used to calculate whether high schools are doing a good job.

"Many states are severely underreporting the number of students who are not successfully graduating from high school, and this undermines their ability to address the problem," said Kevin Carey, a senior policy analyst with the Education Trust, which lobbies on behalf of poor and minority children.

"A high school diploma is the bare minimum that anyone needs to have reasonable success in the job market," he said. States "are not doing the students any good by pretending they are graduating."

In Hawai'i, the state Department of Education reported a 79 percent graduation rate for the 2001-02 school year under the federal law, which requires that students be tracked over four years. The Education Trust study compared Hawai'i's reported figure to a 70 percent estimate calculated by a researcher for the 2000-01 school year.

Hawai'i's 9 percent difference in reported rates was about in the middle of the survey of 46 states and the District of Columbia.

Tom Saka, an information specialist with the DOE, said researchers and states use different methods to determine graduation rates so the numbers can vary. "Everybody does it a little differently because everybody has different interests," he said. "It's just a matter of what measure you use."

North Carolina officials said they do not yet have systems in place to track graduation rates in the manner required by federal regulations.

Instead, the state's numbers reflect the percentage of high school graduates who got their degrees in four years or less, said Lou Fabrizio, who oversees school accountability data for the state's education department. As a result, the state's graduation rate did not count high school dropouts.

The Education Trust study marks the latest example of what some observers describe as attempts by some states to skirt the requirements of the school-reform law. The law, for instance, requires all states to identify persistently dangerous schools and allow students to transfer to safer schools.

Of 92,000 public schools nationwide, only 38 schools in four states now meet the definition of persistently dangerous.

Education Trust officials criticized the Education Department for not doing more to make states comply with the law. But education officials say they are demanding that states supply complete data. A few weeks ago, they announced a new committee to study dropout and graduation rates.

The Education Trust report compares 2001-02 graduation data supplied by states with 2000-01 graduation rates calculated by Jay Greene, a researcher with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank based in New York. Although the study compared different years, Carey said it is still valid because graduation rates vary little year to year.

Much depends on how graduation rates are calculated. Greene, who will serve on the new federal panel, compared ninth-grade school enrollment figures in each state with the number of students who graduated from high school four years later. The calculations take into account state population changes and other factors that affect high school graduation rates, Education Trust researchers said.