Better than bad does not equal good

Two interesting reports were released this week: One on high school graduation rates for urban districts (including Seattle) and the other on state writing exam scores.

Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytic Report on High School Graduation, published by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, ranks Seattle seventh in graduation rates among the 50 largest cities with a graduation rate of 67.6 percent (the 50-city average is 51.8 percent). It should be noted this graduation rate does not represent a specific class' graduation rate, or the graduation rate of districts over a specific time frame. Instead, it is an estimation based on the continuation rates of high school students between the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years. This probably explains why the report's graduation rate is higher than the graduation rate Seattle Public Schools reported to the state. Here are the graduation rates for Seattle Public Schools, as reported through the Washington State Report Card, for the last five years available:

So what does this mean? The difference between the EPERC report and Washington's report card highlight a real need for not only a uniform system of calculating graduation rates, but also a more accurate system to track students. Fortunately, all students in Washington's public schools now have a unique student identifier, allowing the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to accurately track students and calculate graduation and dropout rates. Before, OSPI could not always identify who transferred out of the system and who dropped out, affecting graduation rates. For the Class of 2008, we will hopefully have truly accurate data to show how many of Washington's (and Seattle's) students are graduating on time.

In The Nations Report Card: Writing 2007, published by the National Center for Education Statistics, Washington comes out average, again. In an effort to make it sound like we are doing better than we are, references are made to the 88 percent of Washington 8th graders who scored at Basic or above. That's like patting ourselves on the back for having 88 percent of 8th graders earn D's or higher. The real proof of how we are doing as a state is the percentage of students who scored Proficient or higher-only 35 percent of 8th graders. Ten states performed better than Washington when comparing Proficient or higher scores, including Connecticut (53 percent), Massachusetts (45 percent) and New Jersey (56 percent). Here, again, we see Washington achieving average results with below average resources. Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey all spend more per pupil than Washington (upwards of $2,500 more), and offer higher average teacher salaries (upwards of $11,000 more).

While Washington's system fares better than most states (and Seattle's than other large cities), that doesn't mean it's "good."