Bad News, Good News, “Bad” News
By Mitch Berg
The bad news: Minneapolis has a horrible dropout rate:
America’s Promise Alliance ranks Minneapolis as 45th out of 50 cities in terms of graduation rates, putting the district’s rate well below the average.
The good news? It might just be bad statistics:
But Minneapolis Public Schools researcher David Heistad said not only are the numbers the report uses four years old, but they inaccurately consider students who transfer as dropouts.
“We have a lot more kids moving to charter schools and moving to suburban districts and therefore we had a decline in enrollment during that period of time. So it confounds dropouts with any kind of mobility,” Heistad said.
The “bad” news?
The district’s most recent official reports showed graduation rates of nearly 67 percent, more than 20 points above what the America’s Promise numbers show.
A fifth of the district’s students are seeking alternatives in mid-stream.
And at the end of that, you still have only 2/3 of your students graduating – according to the district itself..
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 am
A system that defines quality as having by its own yardstick 1/3 of its product fail. Education Minnesota must be so proud!
The shame of the situation is that the educational environment would likely produce much better results by kicking out 10% of the riffraff (or assigning them to “special” schools) and holding the others to higher standards. But that would be elitist and not sensitive to their cultural heritage.
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
It could be worse. Read an article this week on the number of Chicago high school students shot and killed each year. They take their graduation rate, and adjust it for:
Students who move out of the district or go to private schools.
and
Students shot dead before graduating.