SCouRGe’s Randy Page’s naysaying on HS grad rate gains was lame. How about a “good one” for the other side, Randy?
Or how about remembering, just for a moment, that it’s not the “other side” at all, that it’s your state, too?
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Is it so hard to say “Nice going”?
Nice going! At last we are not only most improved (not as hard to be when you start really low), but also 37th overall! We beat out states other than AL, LA and perennial favorite MS!
And North Carolina, if I remember correctly…
That kind of improvement is proof that we can change the educational level in South Carolina! Let’s continue the good work instead of giving up and abandoning our public schools.
Yeah, it’s very good news, although the picture of what happened remains murky. The state department of ed uses a different system for tracking grad rates, and isn’t entirely sure how Education Week arrives at the numbers it gets. So it’s gratifying, but mystifying…
The story behind grad rates is no secret. The Department of Education numbers include kids who leave with a certification of completion, which isn’t even a GED. These kids didn’t pass the exit exam, receive enough credits, etc… Basically they just filled a seat. The Education Week numbers count these kids as non-graduates since they don’t receive a diploma.
How much higher would we have been without Mark Sanford though?
I’d say Top 5.
I wonder where you get your information, Fashizzle. Here’s the way South Carolina calculates the graduation rate, in accordance with U.S. Department of Education requirements:
“As defined in 34 C.F.R. §200.19(b)(1)(i)-(iv), the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate
(hereafter referred to as “the four-year graduation rate”) is the number of students who graduate
in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the
adjusted cohort for the graduating class.”
That counts only students who receive a regular diploma, which you don’t get unless you have 24 credits and successfully complete the exit exam.
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/hsgrguidance.pdf
That’s the link to the U.S. Department of Education’s graduation rate calculation if anyone wants to see for himself.
It doesn’t include students who receive a GED, who receive certificates of attendance, or who take more than four years to receive a diploma. Our rate is 73 percent under those guidelines, and we don’t know how we rank nationally yet because only 15 states now have the capacity to calculate it that way. We’re 11th out of those 15th.
15.