Due to the high rate of students not graduating, the State Board decided to review this issue for three months, and come back with MORE ideas of how to obtain higher graduation rates.
Here is one more issue to ?review.? Some of the individual school?s graduation rate just did not seem accurate to me. I decided to look at the 2005-06 End of Course tests and compare the passing rate of these tests to the graduation rate. Yes, a different cohort of students takes the tests, than the ones graduating, but there is something strange going on. Obviously there must be students who CANNOT pass the End of Course (EOC) tests, but pass classes and obtain a diploma. For example:
West Charlotte High School ? Graduation Rate is 81.8% Percent passing EOC?s: Eng I ? 68.2%; Alg 1 ? 48.1%; Biology ? 28.5%; Civics ? 35.6%, U.S. History 28.8%
However, some schools do have similar percentages:
Providence High School – Graduation Rate is 89%
Percent passing EOC?s: Eng I ? >95%; Alg 1 ? 92.9%; Biology ? 84.8%; Civics ? 83.6%; U.S. History 87.8%
?Grade inflation? could be the problem at lower performing high schools that have huge gaps between the passing rates on tests and the percent of students graduating.
If you want to check out your county: Go here for individual school graduation rates, and then to the North Carolina Report Card for how well students do on End of Course tests. Compare a higher performing high school to a lower performing high school in your county, and see if there is a huge discrepancy.
While North Carolina?s graduation rate of 68 percent is not good news, what about those students who graduate, receive a diploma, and cannot do the expected work? No wonder community colleges and universities have high rates of students taking remedial classes.
