Big-city schools struggle with graduation rates

Big-city schools struggle with graduation rates By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Students in a handful of big-city school districts have a less than 50-50 chance of graduating from high school with their peers, and a few cities graduate far fewer than half each spring, according to research released on Tuesday. Fourteen urban school districts have on-time graduation rates lower than 50%; they include Detroit, Baltimore, New York, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Houston. TABLE:Graduation rates for 50 largest districts in U.S. <-- A MUST see!! The findings present a bleak picture and are sure to generate controversy as lawmakers and others push to keep U.S. students competitive globally. While the basic finding that the nation's overall graduation rate is about 70% is not new, the study suggests that graduation rates are much lower than previously reported in many states. It also could bring the dropout debate to the local level, because it allows anyone with Internet access to view with unprecedented detail data on the nation's 12,000 school districts. Among the nation's 50 largest districts, the study finds, three graduate fewer than 40%: Detroit (21.7%), Baltimore (38.5%) and New York City (38.9%). The advantage of the new study is that "you could apply it to any and all school districts in the country with the same validity — and the same problems," says Michael Casserly of The Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for large urban districts. He says it's still unclear whether researcher Christopher Swanson overstates the problem. Swanson's analysis, strictly speaking, is not a calculation of dropout rates but of graduation rates; it estimates the probability that a student in ninth grade will complete high school on time and with a regular diploma. Adding to the debate: The study is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which promotes its own brand of high school reform. Last year, Bill Gates called U.S. high schools "obsolete." The study, which uses 2002 and 2003 data, the most current available, finds that public schools graduate 69.6% of an estimated 4 million eligible students each spring, meaning about 1.2 million students likely won't graduate this year. That means about 7,000 students drop out per school day, Swanson says. Researcher Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute says Swanson's figures "seriously understate graduation rates, especially for minorities." They say that just 52% of blacks graduate, and 57% of Hispanics. Mishel says by comparing the number of graduates with the number of ninth-graders, Swanson exaggerates the effects of the "ninth-grade bulge," in which many ninth-graders are held back a year before tackling more advanced work and, often, state-mandated exit exams. Mishel's most recent research puts the overall U.S. graduation rate at 82%. Copyright 2006 USA TODAY>