Let's get real about Indiana school data

Indianapolis Star-Tribune Editorial:

At the beginning of the 2005-06 school year, there were 969 seniors left in Indianapolis Public Schools' graduating class.

By the end of the school year, nearly 1,300 seniors collected diplomas from the district.
Yes, you read that correctly. IPS had 33 percent more graduates than seniors who began the year, the second consecutive school year it has done so.

There's no way that IPS, which promoted a mere 31 percent of the eighth-graders who made up the original graduating class, experienced a sudden influx of transfers. The fact that just 52 of them would have graduated the previous year shows that holdovers don't account for this.

As the nonprofit Education Trust notes in a report released today, parents and state officials "cannot allow such dubious figures to go unexplained -- or unchallenged."
That admonition must also extend to the Indiana Department of Education and its boss, Superintendent Suellen Reed. After all, IPS' graduation numbers reflect the agency's longstanding difficulty in accurately reporting the condition of education in our state.

Education Trust:

GRADUATION MATTERS: How NCLB allows states to set the bar too low for improving high school grad rates.

"The first ingredient in education reform is to tell parents the truth."

Lawrie Kobza's Performance & Achievement Committee discussed "A Model to Measure Student Performance" Monday evening.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 3, 2007 12:00 AM
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