Today's Gazette article on the public school system's graduation rate doesn't shed any light whatsoever on the sudden increase in year over year percentage graduation rate.
And I say graduation rate for a reason. Because if you look at the actual number of graduating students year over year you see a 17% increase (173/148), rather than the 50% increase implied by the graduation rate, which seems at first look to be a less valid measure.
The Gazette does a decent job of laying out some of the unanswered questions to put the rate in perspective, as well as the Hopkins report's criticism of inconsistent reporting methods, but what jumps out to me as the area of major discrepancy is that there are 97 fewer students in the Cedarbridge graduating class this year than in 2006.
So, the obvious question becomes why is the 2007 graduating class 2/3rds the size of 2006? Where did those 97 students go?
If you assume the same class size in 2007 as in 2006 (309 students) against the reported 173 graduates in 2007 you end up with a 55% graduation rate, versus 47% last year, which seems believable.
I'm not trying to be negative here, but if the statistics aren't credible then we have no foundation for measuring performance. And I simply can't accept that in a year which was as disrupted as 2007 was due to the mold infestation you would see such improved performance.
If you keep it simple, and compare the actual number of graduates year over year you see a 17% improvement to a 55% graduation rate, which is a step in the right direction but still an unacceptable result.
This all reminds me of the manipulation of tourism numbers, which are trumpeting a higher occupany rate, but off of a much lower number of available beds.
