Proposed federal formula for graduation rates wins praise
A Bush administration proposal to require that all states use the same formula to calculate high school graduation rates is winning applause from education experts who say it will shed light on the nation's dropout problem. The proposed regulation is among several the administration introduced last week. Former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group seeking to improve high schools, said a uniform formula would give parents, educators and policymakers a better picture of student performance. "Under the No Child Left Behind Act, high schools have been accountable for their test results but not whether their students actually earn diplomas," Wise said. "This is like counting how many hurdles an athlete jumps, but not recording whether he or she crosses the finish line." The proposal, likely to take effect by year's end, would require all states by 2013 to use a formula the nation's governors endorsed in 2005. High schools, school systems and states would be required to make progress toward a state-determined graduation rate goal. The graduation rate among subsets of students―including those in poverty, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities―also would have to improve. Many educators complain that the law places too much emphasis on how students score on a single test. One proposed regulation would clarify that schools might use a combination of assessments to measure progress. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings would also require states to: (1) post the performance of students on national reading and math tests alongside state test scores, which would give parents a sense of the rigor of state assessments; (2) prove that the data they use to rate school performance do not exclude too many test scores from students who belong to minority groups; and (3) ensure that plans to restructure chronically low-performing schools are sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive.
Source: Washington Post, 4/28/08, By Maria Glod
[Editor’s Note: More details on the proposed regulations and an NSBA statement criticizing parts of them, in some instances for what they include and in others for what they neglect, are below.]
NSBA School Law pages on proposed NCLB regulations
NSBA statement on proposed regulations