High schools face new pressure to increase their graduation rates under federal rules announced Tuesday, but some local education leaders question the timing.
Schools and states will now have to track and raise graduation rates for all students, including minorities and students with disabilities, under regulations announced by federal Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
The new rules are an attempt to extend the No Child Left Behind law to the high school grades, and they come in the waning days of the Bush administration, which considers the law a signature domestic achievement.
“It’s probably beyond the 11th hour. It’s like 11:30,” said Pam Hopkins, executive director of teaching and learning for the Snohomish School District.
Typically, schools report graduation rates for an entire graduating class. With the new rules, they will have to include individual graduation rates based on race, family income and if students are in special education.
The rule changes to the federal No Child Left Behind law also will require all states to use the same formula to calculate graduation rates by the 2010-11 school year.
“First and foremost, these rules take on the silent epidemic of high school dropouts,” Spellings said during an address in South Carolina.
Nationally, about one in four students quit high school. Spellings said just half of all minorities graduate on time.
“We haven’t really tackled high school accountability, and this is a giant step toward doing that,” Spellings said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Local school officials agree with the goals of improving graduation rates and point to reports showing greater percentages of high school students are earning diplomas.
They do, however, question why the changes are being made now, less than three months before President Bush leaves office and a new president takes over.
“For us, it’s not just about the percentage gains on how many students graduate or the statistics about who didn’t graduate,” Hopkins said. “You are really looking at individual students who have become disengaged.”
Schools, starting with the 2012 school year, must meet graduation rate targets for minority groups and kids with disabilities, as well as for the overall student population, to satisfy the yearly progress requirements of No Child Left Behind. Schools that don’t meet yearly goals for every group of students can face consequences, such as having to pay for tutoring or replace principals.
Terry Edwards, curriculum director for the Everett School District, said Tuesday that the goal of getting more students to graduate is “a moral imperative,” but the reality is the federal government has little financial control over most of the state’s high schools.
In a given year, schools in Washington receive about $180 million in what is known as federal “Title I” funding to help schools with large percentages of students from low-income families. About half of the 2,200 schools in Washington receive the federal funds. However, most high schools in the state don’t receive Title I funding, including all Snohomish County high schools.
That means the high schools will be required to report on how they are faring, but they won’t face financial sanctions from the federal government. Nor does it offer much financial assistance.
“Coming out at this stage with no supports to actually change the outcomes and pushing it to the states and school districts, which all have budget issues in this economy, just seems like a disingenuous way to do it,” Edwards said.
Karen Rosencrans, director of the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, has worked with alternative school students for years, and she’s worried that the new law will shift educators’ focus from individual children to quotas.
“I would just hope that people making the decisions remember that children develop and learn in different ways and sometimes at different paces and that, maybe, sometimes how we define a dropout really limits us,” she said. “If anyone who doesn’t finish in four years is a dropout, I think we’re really doing ourselves and our kids a disservice.”
She fears that under the new provisions, schools may be penalized even when students follow nontraditional paths to academic success.
For example, she worked with a student last year who earned her associate degree and a scholarship to the University of Washington without receiving her high school diploma. The student chose not to earn her diploma and was successful in her teachers’ eyes, but under the No Child Left Behind law, she would be considered a dropout, Rosencrans said.
“I understand the desire to help all students be successful,” she said. “I question the methods when you’re talking about spending so much money just trying to provide data and track information. To me, that’s money that’s not being spent on kids.”
In Mukilteo, school leaders on Tuesday were just trying to figure out what new expectations they will need to meet.
“As I’ve said before, No Child Left Behind has a noble goal, but the devil is in the details and we’re just trying to figure out what those details are,” said Andy Muntz, a school district spokesman.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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