Saturday, March 22, 2008

States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School

JACKSON, Miss. — When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

The state schools superintendent, Hank Bounds, says the lower rate is more accurate and uses it in a campaign to combat a dropout crisis.

“We were losing about 13,000 dropouts a year, but publishing reports that said we had graduation rate percentages in the mid-80s,” Mr. Bounds said. “Mathematically, that just doesn’t work out.”

Read more HERE

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jennifer,

We've never formally met, but I work as a Realtor here in Charles County, and I was wondering if you could help point me in the right direction. I'm looking for some sort of map and/or index of school districting zones, and I was unable to find them on the CCBOE website. Does the board publish anything of this nature, or do I need to call each time I am working with a location with uncertain zoning?

Jennifer Abell said...

Ms. Benya,
I thought we had something on the CCBOE nweb-site that showed the boundaries, I've searched and cannot locate it. I know Calvert county has one on their site for their schools. I'm looking into this and will get back to you.