Graduation picture to get clearer

Georgia's graduation rates have been climbing steadily since 2001, but those numbers might be painting an overly rosy picture.

When the Georgia Department of Education implements a new, more accurate formula beginning with the class of 2009, it will likely show graduation rates have been inflated. The new formula -- called a cohort rate -- will allow the state to track individual students to determine their progress rather than rely on the current formula's less accurate estimates.

"We know there will be a drop," said state Superintendent Kathy Cox, but she doesn't know by how much. "What will happen is, if we can't find a student that somebody has said has transferred, then they are going to have to get coded as a no-show."

The assumption has been that these students have transferred, making a school's graduation rate appear higher than it probably is.

The change to a cohort rate has led to significant declines in graduation rates elsewhere in the country.

In Indianapolis, the graduation rate plummeted to 52 percent in 2006 after having been more than 90 percent for six consecutive years. In Louisiana, the rate went from 93.1 percent in 2005 to 64.8 percent a year later, according to the Southern Regional Education Board. North Carolina's rate slipped from 95 percent in 2005 to about 68 percent in 2006, the board said.

The federal government required a graduation rate for No Child Left Behind, so North Carolina produced the best number it could, knowing a system wasn't in place to give a more accurate picture, said Lou Fabrizio, the state's director of accountability, policy and communications.

"We tried everything we could to ensure the public we were not trying to imply the state had a graduation rate in the mid 90s," Dr. Fabrizio said in a telephone interview.

In its response to the federal government, North Carolina even called the number the "NCLB graduation rate" and put a disclaimer in parentheses, he said.

Ms. Cox is hopeful Georgia's graduation rate won't dip much lower than the 75.4 percent of the class of 2008.

The state Education Department has been working with school systems to "clean up" their data and record-keeping, Ms. Cox said. She is hopeful the training will reduce the number of students who leave a school and can't be found.

"We feel that our data has some integrity to it now," Ms. Cox said. "Of course, there's always problems."

In 2007, The Augusta Chronicle reported on the flaws in the current graduation rate formula, called the lever rate. The formula was based on estimates comparing the number of first-time freshmen one year to the number of regular on-time graduates four year later. The Chronicle detailed the extent to which students disappear from class rolls and can't be found. The analysis determined some Richmond County schools could have graduation rates of less than 30 percent.

Regardless of the formula used, Georgia has been improving, said Alan Richard, the spokesman for the Southern Regional Education Board, and "that's a tremendously positive sign." The board is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of 16 states.

He commended Ms. Cox for making graduation her priority and the state's efforts to keep students in school, including Gov. Sonny Perdue's graduation coach program.

"It's a positive sign that Georgia is moving toward using a cohort rate," Mr. Richard said. "I want to give Georgia a lot of credit. Georgia is doing more to address the dropout rate than just about any other state."

In October, then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced an amendment to federal law requiring all states to move toward using a uniform graduation rate tracking individual students.

In 2005, 45 members of the National Governors Association signed a pact agreeing to use a common formula to calculate a cohort graduation rate.

"Even the bad data we had showed we had a problem," said Dane Linn, the director of the association's education division, calling the rates "abysmal."

Cohort rates are a relatively new concept, Mr. Linn said. There previously was no uniform way of calculating graduation rates, not even within states, and information systems weren't in place to accurately track students year-to-year and school-to-school.

The important point is that states can't establish the appropriate policies without accurate data, he said.

South Carolina, one of 16 states using a cohort rate, hadn't been calculating a graduation rate until recently, Education Department spokesman Jim Foster said.

It had been reporting a dropout rate, completion rate and a "holding power" rate, but there was no clear way of determining an official graduation rate, although third parties derived their own number.

"At one point, we knew of at least 12 published graduation rates for South Carolina," Mr. Foster said.

Georgia's Education Department will publish two graduation rates for the class of 2009 -- one based on the current formula and one using the new cohort rate.

Schools will only be held accountable for the rate derived using the lever rate for the class of 2009. Next year, once a baseline has been set, schools will be graded on the new formula.

Reach Greg Gelpi at (706) 828-385 or greg.gelpi@augustachronicle.com.