Thursday, March 27, 2008

Enforced Through Sanctions

States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
By SAM DILLON
Published: March 20, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. — When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

[...]

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

Any conservative of the modern ilk is, I suppose, wondering why reporting false information to the government isn't punished by imprisonment. Or perhaps they're fearing such things. One of the two.

2 comments:

Adorable Girlfriend said...

Are they doing Bush's funny math.

Man.

Susan of Texas said...

There was a small scandal here when someone found out Houston ISD was cooking the books to make Rod Paige (our former superintendent) look good for Bush.

Now Paige is long gone and our drop-out rate is still high.