When I wake up each morning I make an effort to look at the two local papers from my hometown, the local paper where I go to school, as well as news from CNN and MSNBC. Some people call me crazy for looking at so much news, but it is always interesting to see the difference in news reported from CNN and MSNBC.
I saw that in today's paper from my hometown, they had an article on drop out rates in high school--naming my old high school as one of the top 3 highest dropout rates from the time that the freshmen class of 2003 entered and the time that they graduated in 2007. I graduated in 2005, and I know for sure that my freshman class in 2001 was the largest that my high school had seen. We started off well over 500 freshman and only graduated about 300 of us. Some people moved away or transferred to the new high school that opened up in 2002, but the majority of the 200 that were a part of freshman year and didn't make it to graduation did dropout. Now to be completely honest, I knew that my high school would have a high dropout rate because my home county is countryside. So people are either dropping out of high school and getting pregnant or married young, or they are dropping out to help support their family working. Whatever the case might be, I wasn't completely shocked by the dropout rate. However, what I wanted to find out was the nation's dropout rate. So I went to CNN and MSNBC to look for an education heading to see if there was anything in the news. Now the shock came when I found out that there WASN'T an education heading to look under. They have Health, Technology, and Travel, but no education. At the very least there should be a heading (section) on education.
Instead, I went on a Google news search and found an article on MSNBC about high school graduation rates (seen here). The interesting thing--only ONE Florida county made the list for bad graduation rates. But the thing that is even more interesting is that my county graduation rate was over 75%. The Florida county that was listed only graduated around 50% of their students. So, then, why is my county newspaper making it seem like my county has a bad graduation rate? Out of all the high schools, there is only one that didn't graduate over 70%, and even then, it wasn't that far behind with a 68% graduation rate. Yes, it isn't the best. But, they are doing pretty well with the nation's average.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't a crisis with graduation rates slowly in the decline in public schools. What I am saying is that smaller school districts are trying to compare their graduation rates with larger school districts and vice versa. Now that isn't exactly equal or fair on the students that this is being compared to. Socioeconomic status, living conditions, as well as money for each school district and teachers available is something that should be looked at when trying to figure out graduation rates. And according to this New York Times article there will be a new nationwide formula to figure out graduation rates rather than each states' individual formula. However, this does not factor in students who received a GED instead of the traditional graduation method.
There are factors that even the highest people in the education system seem to be ignoring. And until they realize that they are ignoring these factors, school districts across the states will push to see a lower high school dropout rate and continue to think that their district has a high dropout rate--which isn't true for some.
It's actually a very good thing to look around at several sources while watching the news. I myself flip between both of our local news stations, as well as the national ones later on, so I can get the full story.
I agree with your graduation post as well. We've got about 400 kids in my graduating class, and I know that at least 10 have dropped out or tranferred to a school that will get them their GED, but they've blown the their tops off thinking it's Armageddon. They compare big city schools to ours as well, and frankly, that's not fair.