We’re tied for 26th! We’re tied for 26th!

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Welcome

Yes, you heard that right.  We are tied for 26^th!  This week’s CommenTerry explains.

Bulletin Board

• The John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy is sponsoring the Spirit of Inquiry Awards Dinner featuring John Hood of the John Locke Foundation.  The dinner will begin at 6:00 pm and be held on Thursday, December 6 at the Capital City Club in Raleigh.  Details and registration information can be found here.
• The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history.  Please provide links to N.C. History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible.  Go to the N.C. History Project website for further information.
• I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. Beginning in January 2013, I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
• The research newsletter archive is still eating Thanksgiving leftovers.

CommenTerry

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released state-by-state graduation rates for the 2010-11 school year.  North Carolina’s rate of 78 percent was tied for 26^th highest in the nation. 

This ranking is unique.  For the first time, states used the same method to calculate graduation rates — the four-year cohort rate.  The cohort rate represents the percentage of students who begin ninth grade and graduate four years later, adjusted for enrollment changes.  To their credit, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has been using this method since 2006.  A number of other states made the switch only a year or two before the deadline.

Indeed, it took several years to get to this point.  In 2005, the nation’s governors signed the Graduation Counts Compact of the National Governors Association.  The compact was a voluntary agreement to calculate and report statewide graduation rates using the four-year cohort graduation rate. 

Three years later, what began as a voluntary agreement became a mandate under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) law.  Federal regulations required states receiving NCLB funds to begin reporting disaggregated state, district, and school graduation rates following the 2010-11 school year.  This year, the U.S. Department of Education required states, territories, and federal education divisions to report their graduation rates using the cohort method.  The District of Columbia, the Bureau of Indian Education, Puerto Rico, and all but three states (Idaho, Kentucky, and Oklahoma) have done so.

So, what does the ranking tell us?  First, money can’t buy you higher graduation rates.  Top dog Iowa spent nearly $8,000 less per student than second place Vermont and over $2,300 less than runner up Wisconsin.  North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas had relatively low per student expenditures, but all three were among the states with the highest graduation rates.  North Carolina trailed those states but had a slightly higher graduation rate than big spenders like New York and Rhode Island.  Arizona spent $2,000 less per student but matched North Carolina’s graduation rate.

Second, Midwestern states, as a group, outperformed the rest of the nation.  Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Illinois reached the top ten boasting graduation rates between 84 and 88 percent.  Kansas and South Dakota were not far behind.  New England had a number of high performers, including Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.  A handful of Western states, most notably Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Alaska, struggled.  Southern states were distributed throughout the ranking.

Third, the ranking tells us little about the reasons why some states excelled and some did not.  Graduation percentages are straightforward.  The factors that produce them are not. Researchers acknowledge that empirical studies of dropout and graduation rates are costly, time consuming, methodologically challenging, and therefore rare.  Christopher Swanson, the vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, rightly pointed out that it is "hard to put a stamp on any particular explanation [of changes to graduation rates]." There is no apparent relationship between spending and graduation rates, but we cannot say, with much certainty, why Iowa has a higher graduation rate than neighboring states Missouri or Minnesota, for example.

The U.S. Department of Education plans to release additional data, so there will be much more to say about this subject in coming months.  You can count on me to provide every boring detail!

Random Thought

Who had the dumb idea of bringing Topanga and Cory back to television?  Didn’t we bury that catastrophe years ago?

Facts and Stats

SY2010-11 Four-Year Regulatory Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rates

Education Acronym of the Week

CGR — cohort graduation rate

Quote of the Week

"The transition to a common, adjusted four-year cohort graduation rate reflects states’ efforts to create greater uniformity and transparency in reporting high school graduation data, and it meets the requirements of October 2008 federal regulations. A key goal of these regulations was to develop a graduation rate that provides parents, educators and community members with better information on their school’s progress while allowing for meaningful comparisons of graduation rates across states and school districts. The new graduation rate measurement also accurately accounts for students who drop out or who do not earn a regular high school diploma."

– U.S. Department of Education, "States Report New High School Graduation Rates Using More Accurate, Common Measure," November 26, 2012 press release.

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