High School Graduation Rates & Schools’ Grades

Part I: Changes in Determining Graduation Rates

(These articles ran in the Citrus County Chronicle on January 12th and 14th, 2013)

Rarely do I publicly need to take exception to the Citrus County Chronicle Editorial Board. That said, after reading the January 4^th, 2013, Chronicle Editorial “If students are failing, so are we” (click here to read article) and reading the remarks, “OUR OPINION: A black eye for schools, but a gut punch for the community” I feel I must express my frustration about missing information and the true roots of the problems.

I thank the Chronicle Editorial Board for bring this important issue to the public’s attention and while I appreciate that the writer shared that “(Citrus) county’s high schools are still beating the state average of 71 percent in overall graduation rates, with 82 percent, 76 percent and 86 percent of students graduating from Citrus, Crystal River and Lecanto high schools, respectively.”, I have a concern when the writer writes, “There’s a glare to the silver lining, though: Those figures represent declines for two of the schools. In 2011, those respective rates were 83 percent, 83 percent and 80 percent”. What the writer did not mention or perhaps does not understand is the reason for the decline in high school graduation rates and thus the State’s grades for our high schools.

What is missing is how this year in Florida, the Florida Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education entirely changed how they determine graduation and dropout rates in Florida. What concerns me is that parents will read the editorial and assume our high school– high schools that ranked 12^th in the state of Florida for having the highest graduation rates– are not performing well and believe that our high school graduation rates are dropping as a result of poor instruction or curriculum when in fact that is not the case!

In 2012 the State of Florida, established the graduation measure by combining the Four-Year Federal Uniform Rate and the Modified Five-Year Rate. In the Four-Year Federal Uniform Rate a high school student that does not graduate in four years (but perhaps in 4 ½ or 5 years) are classified as dropouts; G.E.D. graduates, students that transfer to a vocational program, and high school “special diploma” graduates (i.e., CREST and Key Center Students) are also all classified as being non-graduates in the Uniform Rate.

These graduations rates do not take into account the individual growth of a student. It has been our School Board’s position that WE PREFER LATE GRADUATES TO NO GRADUATES. These new graduation/dropout rates are completely misleading and tell the wrong story and are of little value to school leaders and teachers. As if this were not enough, new high school graduation requirements that are now in Florida Law mandate that by 2015 all high school students must demonstrate through standardized testing that they are college ready in order to receive a basic accredited high school diploma from the Florida Department of Education. These new graduation requirements combined with the aforementioned Four-Year Federal and Modified Five-Year rates are a recipe for disaster.

In addition to tinkering with graduation rates, the State of Florida changed in 2012 the way school grades are calculated. While all grades were affected, the changes were greatest and most complex at the high school level. As an example, when determining Florida schools’ grades for 2012 in math, only Algebra I scores are used to determine the schools’ total grade for mathematics. No other math classes’ scores were included. Furthermore, the State did not use actual science grades to determine a high schools’ science grade. Instead, a phantom science score was created by averaging all the test scores of all non-science categories and giving that as the science score for the school. Our high school grades were also negatively affected because the new school grading system included student scores from students attending alternative schools, such as The Renaissance Center and CREST. These alternative schools serve many of our most severely behavioral, emotional and physically challenged students.

As a School Board we are committed to continually improving teaching and learning at all school levels. We use multiple indicators to verify that best practices and modern proven teaching are benefiting our students be successful. Using the 2012 flawed school grading system and misleading graduation rates to imply to the public that our Citrus County schools are not being successful is unfair to all involved –parents, teachers, students, and community –in the education of our young people.

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In Part II, I will share how the new and unreasonably high graduation requirements for high school will result in a further decline in our high school graduation rates.

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