Education Week - December 5, 2012 - 26

EDUCATION WEEK

DECEMBER 5, 2012

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RATES
STATE RATE

First for States: Same Graduation Formula
By Jaclyn Zubrzycki
The U.S. Department of Education last week released high school graduation rates for the 2010-11 school year for 47 states, the District of Columbia, and other jurisdictions that were for the first time calculated using a common method. The reported rates vary widely by state. Iowa leads the way, reporting an 88 percent overall graduation rate, while at the other end of the scale, 59 percent of 9th graders graduated within four years in the District of Columbia. Most states also reported large differences between the graduation rates of white students and those for students of color and other special populations. African-American students in every state, and Latino students in every state except Maine, graduated at lower-than-average rates for their states. The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate calculates the percent of students entering 9th grade who graduate four years later. While states have tracked high school graduation rates for years, they used different formulas. States were required to report the same adjusted cohort rate by a 2008 regulation that establishes the common calculation method and requires states to use it as a measure of schools’ performance. Many states have been preparing for a potential public relations challenge since then. The cohort rate is considered to be a more accurate measure of schools’ successes than other formulas, and in some states, including Oregon and Alabama, the new numbers look markedly lower than rates calculated using other formulas. Calculating the cohort rate requires four years of student-level data, which necessitates the use of education data systems that many states have only recently put into place. For that reason, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Puerto Rico filed extensions and reported graduation rates calculated by older formulas for 2010-11. In a Nov. 25 letter to chief state school officers, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says the department will hold states to the new graduation-rate reporting requirements. An attachment to the letter compiled all states’ graduation-rate targets set either by the No Child Left Behind Act or through states’ waivers. Those targets range from 80 percent in Kansas to 100 percent in Oklahoma. Mr. Duncan’s letter counters concerns from several advocacy organizations. They are worried that some states that have received waivers from requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act will not use the new formula to hold schools accountable for improving their graduation rates. Federal education officials said there is no plan to calculate a national rate using the adjusted cohort-rate formula and the states’ numbers are not vetted by the federal Education Department. or geds, as graduates, said Amanda Karhuse, the director of government relations for the Alexandria, Va.-based National Association of Secondary School Principals. The Bureau of Indian Education counts all its students as Native American even when they’re not, and only California calculates a rate for Filipino students, according to the Education Department. Even so, “it’s an achievement to have this data,” said Phillip D.C. Lovell, the vice president for federal advocacy at the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education. “This snapshot gives a much clearer picture as to how students are doing.”

Gaps Remain
Mr. Lovell said that it was worth noting that a number of states graduated more than 80 percent of students, but that “there’s enough underperformance that we can’t rest.” The large achievement gaps between different racial and ethnic groups align with previous graduation-rate calculations. The share of English-language learners and students with disabilities graduating on time varies even more widely from state to state. In Arizona, only 25 percent of English-learners graduated in four years, while South Dakota graduated 82 percent of such students. Only 29 percent of Louisiana’s children with disabilities graduated on time; in Arkansas, the proportion was 75 percent. Students in both of those groups sometimes benefit from extra years in school, but state-level policies can also affect graduation rates, said Patricia Gándana, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Rogstad Guidera said the new numbers are useful for states looking to improve graduation rates. “By having that comparability,” she said, “it leads people to a conversation we need to be having.”
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‘Incredible’ Progress
The switch to a common calculation method was heralded as a step toward being able to compare outcomes nationwide and sharing lessons from state to state. Aimee Rogstad Guidera, the founder and executive director of the Washington-based Data Quality Campaign, said it was “incredible” that, since 2005, when members of the National Governors Association agreed that states should calculate a uniform graduation rate, “every state has built a data system that allows it to calculate this rate ... that allows us to see what’s happening and have some sort of comparability.” Being able to compare allows states to learn from one another, said Patte Barthe, the director of the Center for Public Education at the Alexandria, Va.-based National School Boards Association. “Maybe other states are producing better results, and if so, what can we learn from that?” she said. There are still some discrepancies in states’ formulas, however. States may or may not include home-schoolers in their overall numbers, for example. Some states include students who receive General Educational Development certificates,

ALABAMA ALASKA ARIZONA ARKANSAS BUREAU OF INDIAN EDUCATION CALIFORNIA COLORADO CONNECTICUT DELAWARE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA FLORIDA GEORGIA HAWAII IDAHO ILLINOIS INDIANA IOWA KANSAS KENTUCKY LOUISIANA MAINE MARYLAND MASSACHUSETTS MICHIGAN MINNESOTA MISSISSIPPI MISSOURI MONTANA NEBRASKA NEVADA NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW JERSEY NEW MEXICO NEW YORK NORTH CAROLINA NORTH DAKOTA OHIO OKLAHOMA OREGON PENNSYLVANIA PUERTO RICO RHODE ISLAND SOUTH CAROLINA SOUTH DAKOTA TENNESSEE TEXAS UTAH VERMONT VIRGINIA WASHINGTON WEST VIRGINIA WISCONSIN WYOMING

72% 68 78 81 61 76 74 83 78 59 71 67 80 84 86 88 83 71 84 83 83 74 77 75 81 82 86 62 86 83 63 77 78 86 80 68 83 77 74 83 86 86 76 87 82 76 76 87 80

Note: Rates not yet available for some states. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education

Conservative Group Kills Anti-Common-Core Proposal
By Andrew Ujifusa
The decision by an influential conservative group to reject a proposal opposing the Common Core State Standards—after 18 months of vigorous debate—reveals a rift among some members of the free-marketoriented organization. The American Legislative Exchange Council, known as alec, announced Nov. 19 that its legislative board of directors, consisting of state lawmakers, had voted to reject a resolution opposing the standards in English/language arts and math. The Washington-based group said it would officially remain neutral on the standards. Alec writes model state legislation and promotes such K-12 policies as school vouchers and virtual education. The prolonged debate also shows that many lawmakers’ understanding of the common core is still a work in progress, even though 46 states so far have adopted the English/language arts standards, and 45 have done so in math. “Alec is kind of planting their flag to say, ‘We are not going to be the forum from which we attack high standards,’ ” said Arizona Sen. Rich Crandall, a Republican and a common-core supporter who chairs his state’s Senate education committee and is a member of alec’s education task force. tion opposing the standards. Alec declined to release the resolution itself, but the lengthy discussions about the anti-common-core resolution were unusual for the group, said Michael Bowman, the organization’s senior director of policy and strategic initiatives. “It’s protecting the states who have made the decision already, and it allows the states to say that if this were ever to become a federal mandate [for] curriculum, we would be opposed,” Mr. Bowman said of the group’s decision. Alec had previously adopted a resolution opposing “federal intrusion in state education content standards.” Mr. Bowman said it was “flattering” to believe that the group’s position on the standards could have a broad impact, but that other education policy groups had important voices as well. Alec’s board of directors and its education task force considered the resolution twice before the final vote last month, which was not unanimous, Mr. Bowman noted. A major part of the reason the debate took so long, he said, was that lawmakers did not have a basic understanding, in many cases, of what the common standards were and what their impact could be.

‘What Is This?’
Some state legislators, Mr. Bowman observed, had vague recollections of voting on things related to common standards previously back in their home states, but did not truly understand what they were voting on. At the time, the issue seemed more like inside baseball involving governors and state departments of education, he added. “They didn’t know a lot about this. I think ... why it took so long is that our members said, ‘What are you talking about? What is this?’ ” he said. But Sen. Crandall also objected to how outside groups wielded clout and prolonged discussions about the standards at alec, which has public- and private-sector members. “Any think tank can pony up [money] to get a seat at the table and have the same power and authority as I do,” he said. “And they don’t have to worry about anybody. They don’t have constituents. Their constituents are their donors.” In the end, legislators formed a

Internal Rift
During internal alec discussions, common-core critics from think tanks such as the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix argued that the standards—unveiled in 2010 as an initiative spearheaded by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers—in fact represent a federal intrusion into state education policy. But common-standards champions, like lame-duck Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, both Republicans, argued the common core represents a big and necessary step forward for state education. Mr. Bennett was defeated last month for re-election by a Democratic challenger, Glenda Ritz, who has questioned his support and involvement in the common core. In May, the alec board of directors had postponed a vote on the resolu-

wide variety of opinions about the common core, with few absolutely opposing or supporting the standards, Mr. Bowman also said. The dynamic revealed that common-standards proponents had not properly informed state officials about the changes to state education policy, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, argued Jonathan Butcher, the education director at the conservative Goldwater Institute who wrote the first draft of the anti-common-core resolution. He acknowledged that getting an influential group like alec to officially oppose the common standards would have been a significant victory. But even with the defeat of the resolution, Mr. Butcher argued, the differing approaches states are taking to the common standards and the associated assessments represent positive developments. He cited as one example Utah’s decision in August to withdraw from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two consortia that are developing common-standards assessments. “It’s going to look a little different as states consider either how to implement or how not to implement,” he said.

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Education Week - December 5, 2012

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