Dive Brief:
- Fully 69% of Washington, DC, seniors in the class of 2016 graduated on time, a 5% increase from the prior year and just six points shy of a 2017 goal set by outgoing Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
- The Washington Post reports Henderson’s goal looks to be within reach, though district officials acknowledge that getting a diploma does not necessarily mean students are prepared for college or career.
- While the graduation rate for all students created a reason to celebrate, the disaggregated data is more sobering — 93% of white students in the district graduate on time, while only 67% of black students and only 60% of black males, more specifically, do.
Dive Insight:
The Los Angeles Unified School District also celebrated record-high graduation rates for the class of 2016. In LAUSD, 75% of students graduated, in part because of new credit recovery options that have since been criticized as too lenient. The credit recovery courses, in which students could skip entire units by passing open-book assessments with only a 60%, were not rigorous enough to meet NCAA standards, for example. The district has since said it would revise its standards.
The problem with any type of accountability metric is the perverse incentive to game the system. Schools that want to be successful have to do well on the metric that people pay most attention to. When that is math or reading scores, some educators feel pressured to help their students cheat. When it is graduation rates, some feel pressured to pass students who don’t deserve it. The question is, what is the job of schools? If it is to prepare students for college and career, neither scenario does that.