| Graduation data reveal dropout crisis in Connecticut |
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New Haven, Conn
Today, the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN) released its fourth annual comparison of official high school graduation rates calculated by the Connecticut State Department of Education and independent rates calculated by Education Week’s Diplomas Count project.
This comparison was conducted in previous years to draw attention to the discrepancies between the state’s methodology, which significantly underreported the number of students who did not complete high school, and Education Week’s, which provides a more accurate accounting. After a sustained push by legislators and advocates, including ConnCAN, the Connecticut State Department of Education announced earlier this year that the overstatement of graduation rates will be rectified with the implementation of a new system that will provide more accurate data.
This year’s Diplomas Count project reports graduation rates for the Class of 2007. ConnCAN’s analysis found an up to 44.7 percentage point disparity between those numbers and the rates published by the Connecticut State Department of Education for the same year for Connecticut districts.
In the past, the Connecticut State Department of Education calculated graduation rates using a paper-based system that relied on students to declare that they were dropping out and on districts to fully report their dropout rates. The new tracking system announced by the Department but not yet fully implemented uses the same criteria as 49 other states and will follow individual students, even when they transfer schools. This new system will eliminate many of the inaccuracies and overstatements that existed in previous reports, bringing it into much closer alignment with Education Week’s graduation rate estimates. The improved analysis will be reflected in the count for the Class of 2009 and subsequent years.
The preliminary 2009 data released by the Connecticut State Department of Education revealed that while 86.8 percent of white students graduated in four years, that figure drops to 58.1 percent for Hispanic students and 66.2 percent for African American students. In all cases, the estimated percentage of graduates dropped significantly under the new and more accurate accounting.
ConnCAN CEO Alex Johnston called on the next governor to make closing the state’s worst-in-the-nation achievement gap a statewide priority, highlighting the importance of education in cultivating a globally competitive workforce:
“The next governor must address Connecticut’s dropout crisis. For years we’ve been telling ourselves that everything is OK, and now we know the truth. In a global economy where high school diplomas are a minimum requirement for access to most jobs, only 58 percent of Hispanics and 66 percent of African-Americans graduated from high school in Connecticut in 2009. These statistics should be a wake up call: research shows that just one class of high school dropouts will cost Connecticut almost $2.5 billion in lost wages over the students’ lifetimes. We can’t afford to ignore the facts any longer.”
Connecticut GraduatioN Rates Analysis - June 2010 http://www.conncan.org/sites/default/files/research/ConnCAN%20Grad%20Rate%20Comparison%202010_2.pdf
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