GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The states with the top five and bottom five graduation rate goals.

A new report from Education Trust, the D.C.-based think tank (PDF), lays out all 50 states’ target graduation rates for high schools. As the graph above shows, New York’s 55% rate comes in at the bottom of the list, sneaking in right above Nevada, whose target is 50%.

The targets are required by the No Child Left Behind law, which forces states to determine whether every one of their high schools is meeting standards or not. To meet standards, high schools must either meet their state’s specific graduation rate target — the figures featured in the chart — or, barring that, meet an improvement goal.

If a school doesn’t meet the standard, consequences can be strict; in New York, punishments include forcibly shutting schools down and reopening them under a new leadership and structure.

The improvement goals are sometimes shockingly low. More than half of all states allow any progress at all, or simply that a school does not let its graduation rate drop from where it was the year before. Others require the rate to go up by at least 0.01 percentage point.

New York in this regard is remarkable for setting a target increase of 0.1 percentage point. (more…)

Introducing a regular feature in which we take a look at the history of New York City’s schools.

The Gothamschools Time Machine

The chancellor makes a self-congratulatory announcement about a reduced dropout rate. But analysis by a watchdog organization, often critical of the chancellor’s leadership, says the real rate is much lower. On-the-ground reports from principals confirm the less impressive numbers. Statisticians express skepticism about double-digit improvements. And no one can seem to determine the best way to calculate graduation rates.

This story isn’t ripped from today’s headlines, although if you have read Nat Hentoff’s latest installment in the Village Voice, in part about the persistent unreliability of the city’s graduation data, you can be forgiven for thinking it might be. It’s actually from the New York Times of March 4, 1987:

In a self-congratulatory mood, the New York City Board of Education three weeks ago announced what it hailed as a major improvement in the dropout rate in the city’s schools, down to 30.7 percent. But the fanfare subsided when a respected educational group contended last week that a truer figure for the dropout rate in the last school year was 50.4 percent. (more…)