Left Behind by No Child - Cooking the Books on High School Graduation in Michigan

In Michigan, we are 14 years into systematically starving the public schools for state aid to balance the state budget to pay for tax cuts, at least that long a time publically bashing teachers and public schools, disrupting instruction and wasting money on MEAP tests, and throwing money away on MEAP scholarships for kids who mostly had money to begin with, and then taking public money to pay for crypto for profit, parochial in disguise, union busting charter schools. We've had a democrat governor in Michigan for 2 years plus, but a conservative legislature and a budget straight jacket. Nationally, No Child Left Behind means wasting the same time and money on testing, and attacking public schools.

It's a hard contest about which is worse: cooking the [school] books, or the dropout rate itself.


http://www.detnews.com/2005/specialreport/0505/29/A01-196697.htm


In 2003, only an estimated 77 percent of the Michigan students who started high school four years earlier graduated, according to The News' analysis. The state's figure: 85 percent. ...The estimates compare enrollment numbers from grade to grade with the number of kids who graduate. They don't account for all of the students who move in and out of a school or those who take more than four years to graduate -- reasons why districts call them flawed.
But experts say the formulas are "vastly better" than the way states keep track of dropouts. ...
School officials in South Lyon, Van Dyke, Hazel Park and other districts stand by their numbers.
South Lyon officials, who report a 94 percent graduation rate, say they strictly follow the state's guidelines on whom to count as a dropout. The News' analysis pegs the district's graduation rate at 69 percent. It pegs Van Dyke's rate at 51 percent (the district reports 82 percent) and Hazel Park's at 59 percent (the district reports 91 percent).
...The News calculated the Detroit Public Schools' graduation rate at 48 percent. [Higher than the reported 44 percent]