Magazine lauds La. school graduation rate

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 11, 2009 - Page: 1B

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A national magazine says Louisiana has improved its graduation rates even as the state continues to debate how best to reduce its still daunting school dropout problem.

Education Week also highlighted public schools in East Baton Rouge and Lafayette parishes for their progress in getting more students to graduate. The magazine released its annual Diploma Counts edition Tuesday examining the dropout issue.

Using its own formula, Education Week calculates that between 1996 and 2006, Louisiana’s high-school graduation rate improved by 7.8 percentage points, from 54 percent to 61.9 percent.

During that same time frame, the national average increased by 2.8 percentage points. The magazine reported Louisiana’s percentage gain was the sixth highest in the nation.

Louisiana has already calculated it had a slightly higher high-school graduation rate of 64.8 percent in 2006, and the state improved to 65.9 percent in 2007.

Unlike Education Week, which calculates year-by-year changes in enrollment using what it calls the Cumulative Promotion Index, the Louisiana Department of Education follows entire ninth-grade classes as cohorts, tracking them for four years.

Yet another, more negative take on Louisiana’s dropout problem comes from a report prompted by a request from two lawmakers who are pushing legislation that would create a new curriculum and alternate career-focused diploma for high-school students.

Instead of starting in ninth grade, the lawmakers wanted to start in seventh grade tracking when students start dropping out of school.

That report, generated by the state Department of Education, calculated that only 46 percent of seventh-graders graduate from high school on time six years later. State education officials say that number overstates the dropout problem.

Education Week calculated graduation rates for school districts around the country. Lafayette Parish was commended for improving its graduation rates between 1996 and 2006, with Lafayette improving by 14 percentage points.

East Baton Rouge Parish’s 59 percent graduation rate trailed the state as a whole, but was about 10 percentage points better than what Education Week expected given the system’s tough demographic mix.

The Education Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, has already attacked Education Week’s calculation method.

A study of Texas public schools last year used the Cumulative Promotion Index and found it significantly undercounted the true graduation rate, especially for minority students.