You’ve heard it before. Kentucky’s high school dropout situation is improving dramatically – at least that’s the story. Now, data in a new federal report adds to the growing evidence that Kentuckians have not been told the truth about how many kids are, or are not, successfully completing high school. In fact, Kentucky’s high school graduation rate is two points below the national average.
In addition, our analysis of the federal data compared to claims from the Kentucky Department of Education indicate that an additional 4,400 students are being lost to the system every year, swept under the rug and hidden by bogus graduation and dropout rate data.
Certainly, the arrival of the new federal data is timely. Sadly, almost 18 years after the passage of our education reform, a long-time tradition of misleading the public about graduation and dropouts continues in Kentucky.
For example, a recent report from the Kentucky Long Term Policy Research Center (See our critique here) outrageously claims our dropout performance improved far more than in other states. This poorly done report actually alleges we currently do notably better than the national average on high school dropouts.
But, more and more people are seeing through this inflated nonsense. Among those, Kentucky State Senator Julian Carroll says our dropout rate data is being manipulated and has been for a long time.
Senator Carroll is far from alone. The Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts, Crit Luallen, performed a formal performance audit on our dropout rates in 2006 and now also says no, Kentucky’s dropout data are not accurate.
Ms. Luallen’s office determined, at a minimum, Kentucky’s true high school dropout rates are at least 30 percent higher than published. However, the report indicates the overall rates might be higher still because the auditor was only able to examine data on dropouts who left during the school term. No one knows how many additional students simply don’t come back at the start of each school term, but the number of these additional dropouts is undoubtedly considerable.
So, forget Kentucky’s dropout rate data. It isn’t reliable, and neither are any rankings based on them.
Thus, it is fortunate that additional data closely related to dropout rates has now arrived on the scene. As a bonus, this data can be uniformly computed for all 50 states. This data can be found in a new report from the US Department of Education called “Mapping Kentucky’s Educational Progress 2008.”
Rather than unreliable dropout rates, the “Mapping” report includes a reasonably accurate calculation of Kentucky’s high school graduation rate called the “Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate.” The report compares Kentucky’s graduation rate to the average rate, computed in the same, consistent way, for the entire nation.
Sadly, when it comes to successfully getting kids all the way through high school, “Mapping Kentucky’s Educational Progress 2008” shows Kentucky’s education system doesn’t look nearly as good as state educators and their boosters claim. In fact, Kentucky’s graduation rate is below the national average.
Kentucky’s public school “Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate” for 2004 graduates is only 73 percent, while the national rate is two points higher at a still disturbingly low 75 percent. Thus, nearly 18 years after passage of our education reform act, the most current data available shows the state performs below national average on this statistic, which is a critical, final measure of school success.
Although the federal report is new, its graduation rate calculation has a track record. In fact, slight variations of this calculation have been in use by the Manhattan Institute and quoted by many others for a number of years. Basically, the formula divides the number of public school graduates in a given year by an estimate of the class’ first time enrollment when they were in ninth grade. That ninth grade enrollment estimate is computed from the average of the class’ enrollment in 8th, 9th and 10th grade. While the formula has a small shortcoming when applied to Kentucky, the “Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate” used by the feds is definitely much more accurate than the Kentucky Department of Education’s calculation.
[Note: The federal formula does not correct for about 1,500 private school students in Kentucky who switch to public high schools entering ninth grade. Because the eighth grade enrollment is thus smaller in the federal formula than it should be, the federal calculation slightly overstates the graduation rate by about 1 point.]
As a note, the federal graduation rate for Kentucky agrees within a few points with rates reported by other research groups such as Education Week’s research team, the Urban Institute, and our own Bluegrass Institute analysis.
It is easy to understand the problem with the Kentucky Department of Education’s graduation rate formula. That Kentucky calculation fatally relies on the very same dropout figures that the state auditor found to be in serious error. The errors significantly inflate the state’s own graduation rate claims.
It should be noted that the new federal report also compares the federally calculated graduation rate to the graduation rate claimed by the Kentucky Department of Education. This comparison is somewhat “apples to oranges” because different year groups are involved.
To eliminate this “apples to oranges” problem, we checked the 2004 graduation rate the Kentucky education department published in the Graduation Rates by District and High School 2002 to 2006 Excel spreadsheet.
That 2004 graduation rate claimed by the Kentucky Department of Education is 81.5 percent. Compare to the rate the feds calculate – just 73 percent. If the federal rate is close to correct (it may be high by about a point as explained earlier), then Kentucky overstates its graduation success by at least 8.5 points. Given an estimated first time ninth grade enrollment of about 52,000 students, the 8.5 point difference equates to about 4,400 more students each year who don’t graduate. That’s a lot more kids our education system leaves behind, swept under the rug and hidden by bad dropout rate reporting.
To finish, let’s review some key points.
1) The feds say their graduation rate calculation has been researched and is a reliable statistic to conduct state to state comparisons. It shows a graduation rate 8.5 points lower than Kentucky claims for the public high school graduating class of 2004. The federal data also shows that Kentucky’s graduation rate is two points below the national average.
2) The state auditor says Kentucky’s dropout data are unreliable and provides good evidence to support the claim that dropouts are at least 30 percent under-reported. The auditor points out that the real dropout rate figure is probably even higher than 30 percent.
3) Those same inaccurate dropout figures are used by the Kentucky Department of Education in a highly disputed formula to create the department’s much higher graduation rates.
4) The Kentucky Long Term Policy Research Center also used those very same inaccurate dropout rates to create its dubious state to state rankings.
So, who are you going to trust – Politically motivated people who have strong motivation to make KERA look good at all costs, or people at the US Department of Education who have no reason to either inflate, or deflate, the Kentucky’s real graduation rate performance?
As a final note, here is a very meaningful quote from Senator Julian Carroll which goes right to the heart of why this is important. On the Kentucky Senate floor on January 10, 2008, he said, “Do you know why we build penitentiaries in Kentucky? The answer is to hold high school dropouts.”
Senator Carroll, well said!
