Posted on 06/20/2006 8:18:25 PM PDT by george76
A new report says the city's high schools graduate just 38.9 percent of their students, but New York officials, who claim the rate is closer to 53 percent, are disputing the methodology behind the lower figure.
The study, released Tuesday by Education Week magazine, ranks the graduation rate of the nation's largest school system as the third lowest among the 50 biggest school districts in the country.
Detroit fared the worst, with a rate of 21.7 percent, while Fairfax County, Va., was ranked the best, with 82.5 percent of students graduating.
City Department of Education officials said Tuesday that the Education Week figure, which reflects the 2002-03 school year, fails to properly account for students who transfer in and out of the system but aren't dropouts.
The city calculated the 2002-03 rate as 53.4 percent, she said.
Either way, "we strongly believe that the rate needs to be higher," Mei added.
Researchers behind the report, prepared by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have acknowledged that graduation rates are tabulated in myriad ways by different districts and states but defended their methodology.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Seems like the graduation rate would be something you just know and not need to be calculated.
Even 53 percent is terrible.
Not necessarily, if you went to Publik Skoolz.
I am so tired of this garbage.
On one hand, we say the kids need more money, we should fund the schools more and nothing is more important than education.
On the other, it seems we are constantly undermining the learning enviroment with political correctness, revisionism, and overbearing liberal psychology.
My mother was raised in a one room schoolhouse in KS. She is more brilliant than almost anyone I know.
Maybe the reason kids can't add is simply because it really isn't our priority, no matter what we say.
This was while dress codes and behavior standards were still constitutional.
The problem is not money.
It is the instructors like Jay Bennish who do not teach their subjects...
and school boards who approve of politically correct subjects...
the NEA and their fellow unions...
and ...
2 Just wondering, with a majority of inner city kids never graduating high school, why do we need 20 million unskilled workers from another country? I thought all Americans were Harvard grads running around in Polo shirts.
Because the unskilled workers who come here from another country are about a thousand times more likely to show up for work on time every day than the unskilled workers we produce here in the U.S.
What a brain trust. No wonder they are graduating by the thousands. (/sarcasm)
Those are generally students who graduate within 4 years, which obviously don't count those who dtake a while longer (for whatever reasons).
Still grim tho.
What? You mean these are Blue Nation schools? IMPOSSIBLE!! Look at the graduation rates!! Liberals promised utopia!!
Well I'm fairly sure the solution is not to bus in 20 million foreigners to make certain the Americans never get a job.
The irony is that the illegalswithout educating or special skills actually work; our natives, just sit on their behinds.
An educated person is our best consumer. Oh, never mind, that was a promo for Simms . . .
It is a SIN to send your children to PUBLIC SCHOOL!!
Public school is akin to welfare whereby no matter how much money you throw at it, it will NEVER improve - but just create a bigger bureaucracy!!
Why does the rate need to be higher? Seems to me many are graduating now that have no interest in self-improvement or education. So we just hand more kids graduation certificates? I can print up a boatload right here if needed.
...and can anyone tell me why the Left opposes testing and vouchers?!
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