Dive Brief:

• Mississippi's Board of Education must restructure its school rating system after receiving critiques from the U.S. Department of Education.  
• The state's original plan weighed high school graduation as about 9% of the overall grade; the U.S. Department of Education, however, believes it should be worth more and will only accept plans that weigh graduation as 20% or more of the final school grade.  
• If the school ranking plan is rejected, Mississippi risks losing millions in federal funding.  

Dive Insight:

One issue with weighing graduation rates so high is it breeds a fast-food school culture where students are pushed along — all the way up to graduation — even if they are not academically prepared. When we place emphasis on graduation rate and not the actual knowledge accrued, we risk a disconnect.