Report says dropout rate understated
• The nation's high school dropout rate could be as high as 30 percent, almost three times higher than government estimates, reports a study released May 14 by the Business Roundtable.
According to the report, conducted by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, the U.S. Education Department's claim of an 11 percent dropout rate fails to count students who become incarcerated and undercounts poor and minority teens with transient living conditions or employment status.
The report also says the department counts people with GED certificates as high school graduates even though they did not receive a regular high school diploma.
State tests vary in quality
• New York state has the best school accountability system in the country, according to a report released May 6 by Princeton Review.
According to Testing the Testers 2003: An Annual Ranking of State Accountability Systems, Massachusetts ranked second, followed by Texas. Rounding out the top 10 are North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, and California.
The report put Montana at the bottom, followed by Rhode Island, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Wyoming, Hawaii, Indiana, and Kansas.
During the six-month study, Princeton Review collected data from each state and the District of Columbia. States were ranked on 22 indicators in four key criteria: test alignment to the states' curriculum standards; test quality; the openness of the testing program to public scrutiny; and the extent to which test data is used to support better teaching and learning.
Schools should teach economics
• Schools are not doing enough to educate students about economics or personal finance. As a result, "most students are still not being taught the essential real-life skills they will need to become knowledgeable consumers, prudent savers and investors, productive members of the work force, and responsible citizens," the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) reports.
According to NCEE's Report Card -- Survey of the States: Economic and Personal Finance Education in Our Nation's Schools in 2002, only 14 states require high school students to take an economics course. Only four states require students to complete a course that covers personal finance.
NCEE would like to see more states offer such courses but believes it would be more expedient to integrate economics and personal finance into other courses.
Carbo-loading boosts test scores
• Two economists, David Figlio and Joshua Winicki, found that administrators in Virginia are serving students high-energy lunches to boost the scores of poorly performing students on state-mandated exams, the Washington Post reports.
Figlio and Winicki analyzed the nutrition and calorie content of school lunches given to fifth graders on test days in 23 randomly selected school districts.
In districts with at least one school designated by the state as "failing," school lunches averaged 863 calories during testing periods. That's about 110 more calories than in the weeks before and after students took the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams.
Virginia designates schools as failing if fewer than 70 percent of students met minimum proficiency levels on the SOL.
Districts that served the high-calorie meals experienced an 11 percent increase in the number of fifth graders who passed the mathematics exam. Pass rates increased 6 percent on both the English and history/social studies tests.
While the meals served on test days had more calories, they did not have more nutrients.
Other studies have shown that consuming glucose before taking tests could increase test scores. Figlio compares the practice to "athletes carbo-loading before a big race."
Better math, science education urged
• The Committee for Economic Development (CED) proposes a strategic plan to reverse what it sees as a steady decline in U.S. students' math and science skills.
According to a CED report released May 7, deteriorating math and science education is leading to a shrinking pool of U.S.-educated scientists and engineers.
The report urges action in these three areas:
• Increase student interest in math and science. The business community should collaborate with school districts to enhance the math and science curricula to integrate state-of-the-art applications of mathematics and scientific principles into the classroom.
• Demonstrate the wonder of discovery while helping students master rigorous content. CED calls for better teacher preparation and professional development and teachers should have opportunities to work with people in the technical work force.
• Acknowledge the professionalism of teachers. CED recommends that teacher salary scales be viewed as capital investment.