Pueblog USa

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Defining a Problem: Graduation Rates

Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.

The Drudge Report carries a story today that Senator Al Gore claimed on NBC television that only 53% of our children graduate from high school. A lot of folks, including the Drudge Report and the Census Bureau, dispute this statement.

Let’s bear in mind that Mr. Gore’s vocabulary skills are so weak that he thinks “invent” and “use” are synonyms, e.g., “I invented the internet.”

In fairness to Mr. Gore, however, let’s look at this statement and see if it could possibly be true. (We will ignore the implication Mr. Gore is trying to make that, if true, this is a problem for the federal government and not the local school boards, which would be another example of his ignorance.)

First, what does he mean by “children?” If he means everyone who was ever conceived, then, considering that 30% to 50% of all conceptions end in miscarriages (according to my gynecologist), then it could be true that only 53% graduate from high school.

If he is defining children as persons under 18 years of age, and considering about half, or more, of all high school seniors are 18 years of age at the time they graduate, and are technically adults, not children, then about 53% graduate as children, the others graduate as adults.

What does he mean by “graduate from high school?” Home schooled youngsters don’t attend high school and therefore, technically, don’t graduate. Many other youngsters eventually test for a GED, and don’t, technically, graduate, although it is acknowledged that they know everything they should have learned in high school. If he means the high schooler went through the graduation ceremony, then you have a certain percentage of people who don’t participate in the ceremony, even though they finished the requirements and received a diploma. Others miss out on getting their diplomas because of things like unpaid library book fines, not because their academic requirements are incomplete.

What SHOULD we call the percentage of graduates? In fairness to our schools and our parents it should be the percentage of persons who start school or home schooling who are still alive and healthy at, say, age 21, and who have met all the academic requirements for a high school diploma or who have received a GED. This means that those children who do not complete school because of death, accident, disease, or deliberate harm aren’t held against schools and parents in the graduation rate.