Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.
California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.
The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.
The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.
“I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race,” said Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools. “Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.”
Though it is not mentioned in the article, the high dropout rates across the United States are another indication of the problems that are not addressed by the federal No Child Left Behind act.
The act, which is clearly set up to make it appear as though public schools are total failures when it comes to educating our children, relies totally on test scores, but does absolutely nothing to address major problems that affect education, but have nothing whatsoever to do with our schools.
This push to increase test scores and leave no child behind fails to take into consideration some vital factors, such as:
-What can public schools do to help students who have no support structure in their home lives? It is amazing how many students are able to succeed when they have home lives that are hard for most of us to even imagine, lives that include drug usage, alcohol usage, and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Where are the studies letting us know just how much of an effect the meth epidemic has had on education?
-No Child Left Behind fails to take into consideration the pervasive effect of poverty on neighborhoods and schools. Breaking through that barrier requires a total commitment to improve communities in all areas, not just schools. Until that problem is addressed, teachers and administrators will continue to fight against overwhelming odds.
-While teachers and administrators have a huge impact on children's lives while schools are in session, a support network at home is vital for young people to succeed. So many young people do not have that network, not even because of the reasons listed above, but because some parents do not take the time or the trouble to become involved in their children's education.
The public education system has to take its share of the responsibility in creating dropouts, but as long as shortsighted politicians continue taking the easy way out and laying all of the blame at the schoolhouse door, the steps will never be taken that could help solve this problem.
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