Interesting article by Brian Zimmerman, writing for the Palladium-Item, on decision making on how to change things up at Richmond Community Schools. Their test scores and graduation statistics are indicating improvement, but now the school system is facing declining enrollment and $2.3 million less in funds.
What caught my eye was something mentioned in a way that gives me the idea the Pal-Item has covered the issue more extensively in the past:
At Richmond High School, a reported 29-percentage-point gain in graduation rate — from 54 to 83 percent — exists against the controversial backdrop of students with academic records approximating those of high school dropouts leaving RHS under cover of being home-schooled.
Today’s reform is tomorrow’s corruption. Little oversight over home schooling is seen as a way to allow parents to educate their children as they see fit; without much government interference. The implication from that paragraph, suggests that the same mechanism can be used as a substitute for formally dropping out due to lack of interest or academic ability. Which raises a secondary question: who should get tagged with the failure of these students? Is it a failure of the public school or of the home school? This looks like the educational equivalent of setting up subsidiary corporations to move losses off the books of the main corporation.
A lot of these students who are being reported as being home-schooled have just dropped out, the original school system is reporting them as having “transferred” to another school to improve their numbers.
When a student withdraws from a school, it is in the school’s best interest to report that the student is now attending a new school. Otherwise, the original school has to report the student as a failed member of his graduating class. There is a small chance (“sarcasm”) that may result in a few situations where the old school may actually lie about this self-reported data in order to improve their graduation rate and adequate yearly progress numbers.
Drop-outs get misreported to keep the graduation rates higher, and when it looks like a student may fail to graduate, some schools encourage low performing students to leave, they have no interest in making sure that the student actually ever graduates, just that they do not want to take the hit against their graduation numbers. Since home-schools are not accountable to no child left behind, it is an easy cop-out to report a drop-out as being home schooled.
Among other things, this points to a problem in our metrics. It sounds like a game of hot potato. The last school to touch the kid gets tagged with his failure when, if the kid has been moving around, should properly be attributed to all of the schools in the chain and, even more so probably, to the lack of stability in the kid’s life.
Rob is correct. People need to question these soaring graduation rates. Does it make sense that one year or two years sees a 29% change? Not likely. What has happened is that schools have changed how they count students for graduation purposes. Rob points out they are counting dropouts as having transferred because they’re being home schooled even if they are not.
I believe Matthew Tully of the Star, in a rare moment of lucid writing, wrote a column where he pointed out the techniques schools are using to cook the graduation numbers. Best thing Tully ever wrote. He explained it well. I wish I could find that article.
I thought that home schools were accountable to the Department of Education. If not, shouldn’t they be? (Maybe some job creation potential there — monitoring home schools – LOL.) How do other states regulate and monitor home schools — if they do? Calling Bennett: Is this another instance of Indiana leading the pack towards the bottom? Wouldn’t be surprised.
Indiana is one of the most “liberal” states when it comes to homeschooling. If I remember correctly (we are currently living in a neighboring state), when I homeschooled my son, all the state required was attendance records (180 days) starting at the age of seven. The state we live in now requires one to use specified curriculum and to keep grades. Also, a student must take the state’s standardized test or submit a portfolio, which is looked at by a certified teacher.
I know of many families who homeschool well. And when I taught, I know kids who dropped out only to be seen every day at the local drug hangout.
I’m sure many people are capable of home schooling well, and I have seen some of them in action. My concern would be with a state dept of education and a legislature, etc., that would not provide oversight, guidance, and monitoring to assure high quality results, especially since the conservative nature of the state suggests that home schooling probably has wide-ranging support.
Homeschooling is just the tip of the iceberg (and a rather minor one at that).
The Feds are changing how they track graduation. The numbers over in Illinois (where they take education a hell of a lot more seriously than we do) are frightening.
The real issue is that school districts that have a majority of students who are poor have a majority of students that have the other pathologies of the poor, one of which is a propensity to move around alot (unstable family life), which makes educating these kids, much less keeping track of them for reporting purposes, extremely difficult.
Doug: This is an extremely late response, but I don’t come by here much as hinted at in another post.
Anyway, you are correct. The Palladium-Item did report on the sudden and suspicious rise in the RHS graduation rate. At least one school board member questioned the numbers, and many people in the community were skeptical, to say the least.