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Archive for July, 2011

What if the education reformers are wrong?

That’s the opinion of a growing number of educators who are convinced that the current direction of reform – despite powerful backers that include President Obama, Bill Gates, and many influential academics and nonprofit leaders – is harming public schools rather than improving them.

While teachers unions and a number of prominent education thinkers have been critical of the reform policies for some time, a more concerted effort is emerging to organize those critics. They plan to take to the streets in Washington on Saturday in hopes of galvanizing attention around their cause. The Save Our Schools March has attracted endorsements from well-known academics, educators, and authors.

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Passionate and articulate, many of them classroom teachers, the critics tend to zero in on the increasingly high-stakes role played by standardized tests, which can make or break the reputation of a school or teacher – even if the tests aren’t very good.

“What we call ‘accountability’ now is just totally unreliable numbers that are meaningless in terms of the lives of children and the careers of teachers,” says Diane Ravitch, a historian and former advocate of standards-based reforms who is now one of its most frequent and ardent critics. “All they’re doing is terrorizing teachers.”

Attaching so much importance to tests, say such critics, is leading to unintended consequences – including cheating (with the recent scandal in Atlanta as Exhibit A), a narrowing of the curriculum, and the reduction of many schools into test-prep factories that ignore the higher-thinking skills needed for college and the workplace. Instead, they assert, more attention should be paid to poverty and the related factors affecting students’ achievement, teachers should get better support and training, and evaluations should be more nuanced.

Although the Obama administration has been trying to address what it sees as shortcomings in the No Child Left Behind law, critics say that overall the administration is going in the wrong direction on reforms.

“This is impassioned educators pushing back for good or bad,” says Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, who is generally an advocate of standards-based reforms. “I think it’s clear that this isn’t union power tactics.”

In May, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote an open letter to America’s teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week acknowledging many of the concerns voiced by teachers. He concluded the letter, “I hear you, I value you, and I respect you.”

Rather than appeasing teachers, it unleashed a storm of angry blogs, letters, and comments from educators who feel far from appreciated.

“The things you say here are, as Hamlet once said, ‘words, words, words,’ but there is no substance behind them,” reads a typical comment about the letter, posted on the Department of Education’s website. The teacher also says, “The education policies of this administration are the single reason why I will not vote to reelect Barack Obama in 2012.”

Why such disgruntlement?

Certainly, some teachers are unhappy for professional reasons, seeing everything from their pay to, in some cases, their job security hinging on tests they don’t believe in. Others rail against the constriction of their autonomy in the classroom.

Sabrina Stevens Shupe, an organizer of the march and a former teacher in the Denver Public Schools, recalls her frustration with a district that hired her for her creativity and praised her for the strides she was making on math with her fifth-graders, but then criticized her for not following the prescribed curriculum exactly – even when she had seen it wasn’t working.

“I was handed a book and was supposed to read verbatim each section,” she recalls, with a district “support” person there to monitor her compliance. For reading, she was supposed to pair students up and have them read to each other, counting each other’s words and mistakes – although in many cases, neither child understood what he or she was reading. “Comprehension didn’t enter into it,” she says.

Ms. Shupe’s contract wasn’t renewed at the end of the year despite only positive evaluations. Now, as a blogger and activist, she says she hears dozens of stories similar to hers.

“We need to be creating conditions that inspire people to do their best work, instead of punishment and reward systems that inspire lowbrow work and cheating,” she says.

Still, despite the angry rhetoric heard on both sides, many leaders of the standards-based reforms insist there is more agreement than people realize.

“We all want the best for kids, and we all want more students, regardless of their circumstances, to graduate high school ready for postsecondary education. There is a very legitimate debate about how best to get there,” says Jonah Edelman, cofounder and chief executive officer of Stand for Children, an advocacy group that has pushed for laws in many states that, among other things, hold teachers more accountable and make job security more dependent on performance.

Like many leaders identified with the accountability movement, Mr. Edelman emphasizes that the goal has never been just about test scores, but about how to get students learning. He bemoans any policy that encourages teachers to teach to a poor test or to cheat. But without some form of measurement, too many students will fall through the cracks, he worries.

“The answer lies in striking the right balance between effective assessment of and for learning, and accountability that is smart,” Edelman says. “It’s a little bit of a zigzag, but overall we’re moving in the right direction.”

Many of the reform movement’s biggest critics are quick to say that it’s not that they disagree with assessments; it’s the top-down, high-stakes nature of the tests that they have a problem with as well as the minimal effort to get buy-in from teachers and parents for the policies.

Recently, the National Education Association approved, for the first time, a policy that student achievement should be a factor in teacher evaluation. But it simultaneously asserted that no system currently does so in the right way.

Anthony Cody, a longtime teacher and teacher coach in Oakland, Calif., and another organizer of the march, says he’s seen many mediocre teachers get excellent test scores for kids and outstanding teachers get worse ones.

He remembers students complaining when a group of teachers was giving them challenging writing and thinking projects. The students asked them why they didn’t just do what the prior year’s teacher had done and say what would be on the test.

“We have managed to transmit from the highest level in the nation to these individual students in Oakland that what matters is the test score,” says Mr. Cody. “These students are going to get to college and find their professors don’t actually say, ‘Here are the 50 questions that will be on the test.’ ”

A common refrain among disgruntled teachers is that the current policies aren’t leading to the kind of schools that the top leaders would want to send their own children to. The Obamas, for instance, send their daughters to the private, progressive Sidwell Friends School – not a place known for test prep or a narrow curriculum.

So where will the backlash against the reforms lead?

It’s unlikely that the policies of accountability and testing are going to be stopped, given their momentum. But even some advocates of those policies say that more debate may ultimately be a good thing for education.

“There is a simple-mindedness, an arrogance, and a reflexiveness with which the reformers are pushing their agenda, particularly from Washington, and I think they’ve wound up giving classroom educators serious and fair cause for concern about how things like value-added evaluations or merit pay are taking shape,” says Mr. Hess of AEI. “This pushback both helps call attention to the need to do this smarter and offers an opportunity to slow down and pursue these things with the deliberation and thoughtfulness they require.”

MONITOR QUIZ: Think you know the US? Take our geography quiz.

A competitive job market that continues to show minimal growth has added to the doubts and frustrations some students and recent graduates have about life after college. In an effort to aid young professionals in their job searches, LinkedIn–the social network of more than 100 million members and recognized for connecting professionals–has added new sections to its profiles that allow students and graduates with limited professional experience to highlight successes in the classroom. These new sections allow students to post information regarding projects, honors and awards, involvement in organizations, test scores, and courses.

Laurie Boettcher, a social media speaker and trainer, believes the new sections will give students and graduates a leg up in the job search. “I think it’s definitely going to make them more competitive,” Boettcher says. “Employers spend so much money on training new employees and, if they know you’ve already had some experience in doing some of this type of work, that’s going to be a big deal.”

[Learn why college students should join LinkedIn.]

With the revamped profile choices, users have the ability to reorder sections to highlight and prioritize their strongest attributes. According to Eric Stoller, a higher education consultant, students should understand that adding positive information won’t necessarily make them stand out from the crowd. “With today’s millennial generation, everybody’s getting honors and awards,” Stoller says. “It seems like you come in 7th place [and] you get a medal. Same thing with test scores, with grade inflation, everyone could have a 4.0 GPA, because who’s going to check it?”

Stoller suggests highlighting “tangible items” such as projects or organizational involvement, which better relate to your professional potential. “What have you done [on campus] and how did you go about doing it?” Stoller notes. “Showcase your leadership ability, your ability to work with other people, [and] your decision-making ability.”

Although providing information on participation in projects and organizations can be beneficial, students must be aware that the job search does not end there. Abhishek Seth, a rising senior at Boston University and active user of the social platform, fears students may use the sections for the wrong reasons. “I’m a little afraid that it’s giving false hope to students because they think they can just post their credentials on their wall and get a job,” Seth says. “I think one thing I learned quickly [on LinkedIn] was that people wouldn’t just come to me. I had to reach out to others.”

[Find 10 paying college jobs that look good on your résumé.]

Seth also believes the stigma of being a college student could carry over to a user’s LinkedIn profile, causing them to lose ground to other more experienced workers. “It pigeonholes them as a student by talking about what organizations or fraternities they’re working for,” he notes. “Automatically they’re thrown into a student category. Big companies don’t want students. They want real professionals.”

While highlighting your academic achievements can strengthen your profile, employers are still primarily interested in the internship or work experience that students and recent graduates attained during college, notes Lindsey Sparks, a senior PR specialist at American Fidelity Assurance Company, an insurance provider.

“When you have a stack of 70 résumés for a position, and half of them have internship experience, they’re immediately going to go above all of the people who don’t list that,” Sparks says. “So it’s really hard for people to stand out if they don’t have professional experience to go along with it.

[Discover the 10 universities producing the most interns.]

While many students are aware of the importance of displaying professional experience on LinkedIn, some are encouraged by the option to add classroom successes to their profiles. Andi Enns, a rising junior at Park University, says that these new sections will likely motivate students to be more active on campus. “It will remind them that it is really important to get involved and have the type of experiences we may not be able to have in an entry-level job,” Enns notes. “These new sections give me the opportunity to show potential employers that I do more than study on campus.”

It remains to be seen whether the new LinkedIn sections will improve college students’ and recent graduates’ chances of landing jobs, but higher education consultant Stoller believes the social network has given them the opportunity to leave college more prepared for the challenge of securing employment. “Everyone talks about higher ed not preparing students for the real world, and I think LinkedIn has offered a chance for students to get more connected to the real world earlier in their academic careers.”

Have you found success on LinkedIn? Share your stories with us on our Best Colleges Facebook page.

BOSTON (Reuters Life!) – A high school diploma is not enough to secure the best paying and most interesting jobs, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard University to build his computer company.

“Every student needs a meaningful credential beyond high school,” said Gates, who spoke at an education and employment conference sponsored by the civil rights group the National Urban League.

“Higher education is crucial for jobs,” he said, adding that education is an equalizer in society and is the key to getting urban America back to work and fighting poverty.

Gates said he believes college should be “for almost everyone,” but that parents, teachers and entire communities need to help make those opportunities available.

Despite dropping out of college in his third year, Gates credited his own education, supportive parents and great teachers with his success.

“Our public schools range from outstanding to outrageous and where a child’s school is located on that spectrum is a matter of luck,” he said. “When it comes to education, we should replace luck with equity.”

Getting the most effective teachers into the classrooms and using their best practices to help other teachers improve is critical to making that happen, he said.

Teacher improvement should include feedback from peers and students, to some degree test scores, and even video analysis from the classroom, according to Gates.

Gates, who said there can be good schools in even the poorest neighborhoods, pointed to some charter schools forging a path with less money and better results.

“It’s not about throwing money at the problem,” said Gates.

“It’s about the way the teachers are picked. It’s about the way the teachers are encouraged. It’s about the culture of the school, the high expectations,” he added.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

(Thinkstock)

The revelation that more than 80 Atlanta teachers admitted to cheating on state standardized tests–with one group of elementary teachers even holding a “party” after school to change their pupils’ answers by hand–has rocked the education reform movement.

But one question has been left unanswered: Why would a teacher resort to cheating in the first place?

The Notebook blog has found a Philadelphia teacher willing to explain why she helped her 11th-grade English students cheat on the state’s standardized tests. (The blog earlier broke the story that Pennsylvania officials suspected cheating may have occurred in 60 state schools.)

The teacher, who remains anonymous in the story, says she began to help her students cheat because she worried their self-esteem was crushed by taking tests they were in no way academically prepared for. If a student asked a question during one of the eight yearly testing periods, she would help him or her find the right answer, or occasionally just point to it on the exam.

“I never went to any student who didn’t call me to help them cheat,” said the teacher. “But if somebody asked me a question, I wasn’t willing to say, ‘Just do your best.’ They were my students, and I wanted to be there for them.”

The teacher said administrators bullied teachers about boosting test scores so that the school would make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), creating a constant state of performance anxiety in the classroom. Schools with low scores must improve by a certain amount each year to avoid federal sanctions set forth by the No Child Left Behind law. In some cases, the federal government shuts down schools that fail to boost scores year after year.

“The prevailing message was, ‘We have to make AYP this year, or they’re going to shut our school down and you’re all going to lose your jobs.’ At every professional development [session], that’s what we discussed,” the teacher said. She added that many teachers at her school engaged in cheating.

Read her whole story here.

The Atlanta scandal and a USA Today report of potential teacher-sanctioned cheating in 1,600 classrooms across six states has put pressure on the Obama administration for its focus on standardized testing. Teachers in some districts are being paid bonuses for their students’ performance on state tests, and many others have their performance evaluation tied to those scores.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says that the emphasis on tests does not encourage cheating. In fact, he sees it as the only way to ensure schools are adequately teaching their students.

CHICAGO – Michigan’s attorney general on Friday appealed a federal appeals court decision that struck down a law banning affirmative action in college admissions.

The 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision July 1, found that an amendment to the Michigan constitution impermissibly burdens racial minorities.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette Friday requested that all 16 judges on the 6th Circuit court rehear the case. The law, known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, will stay in effect pending a final decision by the court.

“It’s absurd to conclude that banning racial discrimination somehow perpetuates racial discrimination,” said Schuette, in a statement. “It simply defies common sense.”

George Washington, a Detroit attorney who represented a civil rights group opposing the law, has said Michigan universities already give special consideration in admissions to certain groups of students, including those from rural backgrounds, those with lower incomes, and veterans.

What the law does is prohibit racial and ethnic minorities from asking for the same consideration in admissions as other groups, Washington said. He expects the case to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Schuette said the 6th Circuit ruling conflicts with earlier rulings of the same court, and is in conflict with rulings by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the California Supreme Court, which upheld a nearly identical California ban on racial and gender preferences.

The fight over affirmative action policies at Michigan’s public colleges and universities began in the 1960s and 1970s, when African-American and other minority students first successfully lobbied for the policies’ adoption.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2003 that universities cannot establish quotas for members of certain racial groups, but may consider race or ethnicity as a “plus” factor along with others.

The Michigan law was approved by voters in 2002 and upheld by a separate three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit in 2006, according to Schuette.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AFP) – A Tunisian cyberdissident and a Russian blogger may not appear to have much in common, but they were brought together at Yale University in a program drawing elites from around the globe.

Established 10 years ago, Yale’s “World Fellows” initiative has lured a diverse group of mid-career professionals deemed to be “emerging leaders” to the prestigious Ivy League school northeast of New York.

Each year, 14-18 people earn the right to spend a semester on the leafy campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Fellows — whose fees and living expenses are fully funded by the university — take classes but also offer guest lectures to undergraduates and meet with students to share their experiences.

Program veterans include prominent Chinese AIDS activist Wan Yanhai, who is now living in the United States due to fears for his safety; Lebanese gallery owner Saleh Barakat; and Venezuelan opposition lawmaker Maria Corina Machado.

“We receive 3,800 applications from the six regions of the world,” program director Michael Cappello, an expert on infectious diseases, told AFP.

“Selection is a four-month process. The criteria are flexible — the most important criterion is our belief that in the next five to 10 years, the candidate will have a national impact as a leader in some field.”

Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption whistleblower, took classes on corporate law but also gave lectures about his homeland.

Tunisian cyber-activist Fares Mabrouk said he came to Yale to learn how to launch a “democracy think tank” in his country, but also took a music appreciation course.

“People who will be leaders need to better understand the world globally,” Cappello said.

Valerie Rose Belanger, the program’s director of partnerships, added: “These are brilliant people in various fields, and the most important thing is they would never have met.”

She said the fellows become “role models” for the regular students, who are eager to meet people “who take risks and are practitioners… not academicians as we are here.”

Mabrouk lived at Yale late last year, returning to Tunisia in December 2010 — just before the eruption of the popular revolution that would topple President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and spark uprisings across the Arab world.

“I made friends from India, Indonesia, from all over — they wrote to me during the revolution, and we’re still in contact,” said Mabrouk, who is now working with a group of bloggers ahead of October polls to elect a constituent assembly.

For some fellows like Wan, the United States becomes their adopted homeland; for others like Mabrouk, a stay at Yale marks a professional turning point.

In 2007, after his time as a World Fellow, Barakat — who had owned a gallery since 1991 — organized Lebanon’s first-ever pavilion at the prestigious Venice Biennale contemporary art festival.

He has also worked with the Tate Modern in London and opened a second gallery.

Turkey’s Hakan Altinay launched a project on global civics instruction — what started as a news article became a book translated into several languages. A documentary is in the works.

And Machado, elected to Venezuela’s national assembly in 2010, has been tipped as a potential candidate to battle Hugo Chavez for the presidency in 2012.

PHILADELPHIA – A school district in the town named for chocolate king Milton Hershey went to court on Thursday to argue that his sweet dream of funding education was ignored by a foundation that has instead spent millions on entertainment.

The Derry Township School District said in a document filed in Orphans Court of Dauphin County that the founder of The Hershey Chocolate Company had local schools in mind when he included money for educational purposes in a will written before he died in 1945.

Instead, the Milton S. Hershey Foundation has used over $ 9 million from 2003 and 2008 to pay for entertainment venues such as the Hershey Museum, Hershey Gardens and Hershey Archives, the school district said.

Barely a drop of the riches have gone to the school district, which has received a total of $ 25,000 since the 1960s, the court papers said.

The school district maintains that if Hershey’s wishes were properly honored it would be receiving at least $ 300,000 and perhaps as much as $ 1 million per year. The district’s annual budget is about $ 50 million, and the money could help to buy laptops for high school students and make physical improvements to the middle school, school officials said.

The legal struggle unfolded against the backdrop of a ubiquitous Hershey presence in the township, including street lights shaped like Hershey Kisses, gardens mulched with chocolate-smelling cocoa bean shells, and a luxurious spa at the Hotel Hershey that features cocoa facials and whipped cocoa baths.

The town is also home to the Milton Hershey School, a private academy that educates 1,800 children in social and financial need.

School officials said the 3,600-student public school district did not raise taxes recently because of taxpayer pressure to hold the line and receives only about 30-40 percent of its budget from the state.

Donald Papson, executive director of the foundation, said Thursday that it disagrees with the definition of deserving educational recipients in the court papers.

Papson also said that the school district gets an additional $ 1.8 million from a separate Hershey trust each year. He said the payments from the foundation to the district were dropped in 1967 when the state recalculated the education aid formula, and the board at that time felt the state money was sufficient for the district.

In a separate, unrelated investigation of another Hershey branch, the state attorney general is looking into how millions of dollars were spent for several land deals in the last several years. That probe began in 2010 when now Governor Tom Corbett was the attorney general.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

BOSTON – A high school degree is no longer sufficient to secure the highest paying and most fascinating jobs, mentioned Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who himself dropped out of Harvard University to create his laptop or computer organization.

“Every student requirements a meaningful credential beyond high school,” mentioned Gates, who spoke to the mostly African American audience of mixed ages at a National Urban League conference on education and employment.

“Higher education is crucial for jobs,” he mentioned, adding that education is an equalizer in society and is the important to obtaining urban America back to function and fighting poverty.

Gates mentioned he believes college need to be “for virtually everyone,” but that parents, teachers and whole communities need to help make those opportunities offered.

In spite of departing college in his junior year, Gates credited his own education, supportive parents and wonderful teachers with his enviable and lucky outcome.

“Our public schools range from outstanding to outrageous and where a child’s school is located on that spectrum is a matter of luck,” he said.

“When it comes to education, we ought to replace luck with equity.”

Finding the most efficient teachers into the classrooms and employing their greatest practices to aid other teachers enhance is essential to generating that occur, he stated.

Teacher improvement should include feedback from peers, student feedback, to some degree test scores, and even video analysis from the classroom, according to Gates.

Gates, who stated there can be great schools in even the poorest neighborhoods, pointed to some charter schools forging a path with less funds and better results.

“It is not about throwing cash at the problem,” mentioned Gates.

“It is about the way the teachers are picked, it is about the way the teachers are encouraged, it is about the culture of the school, the high expectations,” he stated.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

DENVER – Young students in Colorado schools can face ticketing or charges for scrawling doodles on a desk, accidentally hitting a teacher with a beanbag chair, or swiping a stick of gum from a teacher’s purse.

That’s what a group of high schools students told a state legislative panel Wednesday examining Colorado’s strict disciplinary policies, several of which were implemented in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and other high-profile circumstances of youth violence.

“We are here because we think schools can be safe with out criminalizing students for minor misbehaviors,” said Brandon Wagoner, 17, who was among the group of students who stood in a semi-circle in front of the panelists as each read them particulars of the cases.

Republican Rep. B.J. Nikkel, a member of the panel, said zero-tolerance policies have led to the “over-criminalization” of students and that law enforcement often feels shackled because they’re left with little discretion on how to deal with difficulty students.

But Colorado is not alone in seeking at current policies.

Seema Ahmad, a staff attorney at a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights group known as Advancement Project, said other states have also begun to re-examine school discipline.

In Florida, legislators approved a law that calls for school boards to generate guidelines with law enforcement to distinguish between minor and severe offenses to permit for disciplinary discretion, she said. Ahmad said North Carolina also passed a law requiring school districts to examine a student’s intent and disciplinary history ahead of deciding on a punishment.

Texas has introduced legislation like Colorado to make a job force to appear at school discipline, Ahmad said.

Ahmad said about three.three million students had been suspended at least once nationally, according U.S. Department of Justice figures from 2006, the newest available data. Blacks and Hispanics are a lot more most likely to be suspended or expelled than white students, Ahmad mentioned.

Wagoner mentioned the detailed Colorado circumstances were a synopsis of some school punishment in the state this year that has caught the attention of the group he belongs to, Parents and Youth United, which is pushing for policy changes.

The 11-year-old student in the Colorado beanbag case, who was goofing around swinging the chair, was cited with harassment and a third-degree assault charge, the group of students mentioned. The eight-grade student who scrawled on his desk got a municipal ticket for graffiti and the 10-year-old boy who took gum from his teacher was charged with misdemeanor theft, the students mentioned.

“We do want to make certain that criminals are punished, and indeed they will be. We’re just seeking balance,” Nikkel mentioned about its mission to analyze the Colorado’s disciplinary policies, portion of a national trend to review school punishment.

Colorado lawmakers designed the panel this year, such as law enforcement and community representatives. Wednesday was the 1st of a number of meetings before the group develops tips for legislation by October. At the panel’s next hearing in August, they strategy to hear testimony from victims and law enforcement.

Lawmakers said about 100,000 students in Colorado have been referred to police for the duration of the last decade after obtaining in trouble in school, often for fighting or bringing a toy gun to school.

Democratic Sen. Evie Hudak cited the case this year of a 10-year-old Colorado boy who was arrested soon after locating a BB gun on a street and playing with it at a school playground following classes ended. The boy’s mother told the Boulder Day-to-day Camera that her son was playing cops with other boys and not threatening any person.

Jonathan Senft, a staffer with Colorado’s Legislative Council, told the panel that zero-tolerance policies are meant to target serious offense, such as bringing a firearm to school, but at times there are unintended consequences. He said in 1 instance, a Colorado student was suspended for bringing a wooden replica of a rifle to school. Nationally, students have gotten suspended for having nail clippers or scissors, he mentioned.

The Colorado panel plans to also study disciplinary trends amongst races.

Democratic Sen. Linda Newell, who lives about a mile from Columbine High School, where two students killed 13 individuals and then themselves, said she’s conscious of parents’ concerns about their children’s safety. But she mentioned she also desires the panel to appear at ways to alter what she calls a “regimented” method.

Stan Garnett, the leading prosecutor in Boulder County, mentioned he worries about what young children take away from their early experiences with law enforcement.

“1 of the concerns I’ve had is that I believe zero-tolerance usually teaches kids that authority makes no sense,” he stated.

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Ivan Moreno can be reached at https://twitter.com/IvanJournalist

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – States are bracing for plummeting high school graduation rates as districts nationwide dump flawed measurement formulas that typically undercounted dropouts and produced inflated outcomes.

Education wonks lengthy have suspected the statistics used by some people to figure out how their neighborhood high school is faring — or even where to buy a home — can be figured making use of different formulas that create wildly various results.

Now, several states are facing a sobering reset: Some could see numbers fall by as many as 20 percentage points.

Liz Utrup, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Education Department, said graduation rate numbers will soon appear to decrease “across the board” as states move to a uniform calculation that requires them to track each student individually, giving a more accurate count of how a lot of actually finish high school.

“Through this uniform method, states are raising the bar on information standards, and simply becoming much more honest,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated.

Most states are required to convert to the new calculation this year, but the quantity won’t count as part of federal No Child Left Behind benchmarks until the 2012-13 school year. Schools that consistently miss those measures face sanctions.

All but two states — Idaho and Kentucky, which need more time to develop student tracking systems — will start submitting the new numbers to the federal government beginning late this summer.

States that converted to the new formula already have noticed drops ranging from modest to enormous. Michigan had a nearly 10 percentage point fall when they produced the switch in 2007. About half of states are not yet utilizing the new calculation.

Florida’s graduation rate remained about stable, at 79 percent, when it adopted the new graduation rate in the 2009-10 school year. It would have been almost two points greater if it had continued under the old calculation.

States creating the switch this year are providing estimates of expected dips and discussing the change in school board meetings. In Kansas, the graduation rate is expected to tumble from 89 percent to 80 percent, with 1 district in the state anticipating a 20-point drop. Georgia stated its overall rate — now at 80 percent — could plummet about 15 percentage points.

“We’re certainly concerned no matter what with that quantity under 100 percent,” stated Kelly Smith, superintendent of Belle Plaine schools in Minnesota, which is transitioning to the new formula this year. “The new system is not altering what we’re doing in our schools, and we need to have to get that point across.”

Matt Cardoza, a spokesman for Georgia’s Department of Education, mentioned whilst he worries the public might believe that high numbers of students are suddenly failing to finish school, the new formula could generate “a much more accurate picture of how several of our students are truly finishing high school with a diploma.”

Jay Greene, who heads the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, stated he began studying graduation rates in 1999 since he determined a lot of of them made no sense.

“The initial reaction was that I was mistaken, that I couldn’t know,” mentioned Greene. “And I pressed the problem with reporters and at meetings and fundamentally asked the question, `If it is true that you have a 1 percent annual dropout rate, how come you have twice as numerous ninth and tenth and graders as you have graduates?’”

Significantly of the blame for past troubles went to one thing named the “leaver method,” a well-liked calculation for determining graduation rates that also has gained a reputation for being the most generous. The technique, utilized by about half the states last year, works like this: If a school had 100 graduates and 10 students who dropped out from their freshmen to senior year, 100 would be divided by 110, giving the school a graduation rate of 90.9 percent.

Schools weren’t dinged if students took much more than four years to graduate. When students disappeared, they often were classified as transfers, even though some of them had in fact dropped out. Numerous schools weren’t required to document that transfers showed up somewhere else.

“You have to be honest with the information,” said David Doty, superintendent of the Canyon School District in Utah. “If the information does not mean something, there is no point in utilizing it anyway.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, utilised the National Governors Association to push for graduation rate adjustments whilst he led Virginia from 2002 to 2006. His motivation, he stated, was a desire to see how his state stacked up.

Virginia was boasting 90 percent or greater graduation rates for the duration of Warner’s drive for a uniform rate, but that dropped to 81 when the new formula was adopted in 2008.

Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Education settled on a formula comparable to the NGA’s: the quantity of graduates in a given year, divided by the number of students who enrolled 4 years earlier. Also, schools must document transfer students or they’ll artificially deflate the graduation rate.

Schools weren’t necessarily becoming subversive in the way they calculated their rates, mentioned Ryan Reyna, senior policy analyst with the National Governors Association. A lot of states utilised imperfect formulas because they couldn’t track students who moved, which is becoming fixed with the addition of new state-level systems that identification numbers to each student.

Authorities hope the modifications will draw attention to the dropout issue and lead to resources becoming focused on the problem. That is happening in Kansas and other states, where officials are creating a method of early indicators to alert schools that a student is at risk.

“We’re going to take an honest look in the mirror and see how genuine our graduation rate is and where we want to cut the dropout rate,” mentioned former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which has extensively studied the nation’s hodgepodge method of graduation rates. “You’ve got to know how deep the hole is in order to create a technique for getting out of it.”

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Linked Press writer Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this report. Turner reported from Atlanta.