Graduation rate is pretty low

Spin can be funny.  In the Trib today, reporters note that the state's graduation rate is 76 percent--nearly one in four students who start high school don't finish it.  Last year the state reported that its graduation rate was 90 percent.  That doesn't represent a drop from year to year, but just a change in how rates are calculated.

Judy Park, an associate superintendent at USOE, made this point in the article: "If you just look at this you would say, ‘Wow, 90 percent of the kids are graduating in 2010, now only 75 percent are,’" But she noted it’s important to look more deeply at the numbers. "It’s a change in the calculation, not a change in student behavior."

So that's the spin.  And I understand why USOE makes that the spin.  Park even argues that rates are going up.  But the unstated message behind the explanation of this year's "drop" in graduation rate is that the rate has been this bad for years, and the state wasn't telling anybody.