First Year for Standardized Graduation Data

Education Week reported on in a recent story, States Gird to Report Revised Graduation by Jaclyn Zubrzycki on the challenges faced by uniform reporting of graduation rates. For the first time high school graduation rates from all 50 states will be reported using a common measure. The 2008 revision of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standardized how states are to calculate graduation rates. This will be the first graduating class who has been followed from the freshman year to receiving a diploma. Until this year each state would report data based on their own definition for graduation, creating serious distortions in understanding the true performance of American schools. The standardized definition provides for a four-year adjusted cohort rate that requires states to track individual students and capture the number of first-time 9th graders who go on to graduate with a diploma in four years.

The weight placed on graduation rates has grown over the past thirty years. With the introduction of increased accountability introduced in NCLB, graduation rates became an important yardstick of the success of American. This was further enhanced through the inclusion of graduation rates for determining Average Yearly Progress (AYP), which is used to establish federal funding of schools.

The consequences for the individual states are substantial including loss of funds as well as political fallout for poor performance. Many states find themselves in the unenviable position of reporting rates substantially lower, up to 20% lower, than what was reported in past years.

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