Kentucky has changed the formula it uses to calculate graduation rates, and it has caused local numbers to drop – and in one case, nosedive.
Compared to the old method, the new formula results in rates that are about 6 percent lower at Franklin County High School, 11 percent at Western Hills High School and about 30 percent lower at Frankfort High School.
The Kentucky Department of Education today released the data for the graduating class of 2010, as required by the federal No Child Left Behind program.
To meet their federal goals, schools and districts will be required to have a graduation rate of 82.32 percent or close the gap between the previous year’s rate by at least 10 percent.
Statewide, the 2010 graduation rate is 76.7 percent. In 2009 under the old formula, the state reported a rate of 83.9 percent.
The new method, called the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate, will be used through 2013. After that, Kentucky will begin using what’s known in education circles as the cohort model – tracking each student individually.
The department cautions that the data released today shouldn’t be compared to previous years because of the switch to a new formula.
Chrissy Jones, assistant superintendent for curriculum for Franklin County Public Schools, says she’s not surprised that the new numbers are lower.
“We anticipated this, so we’re just going to get with it,” she told The State Journal this morning. “When you look at the cumulative effect of (dropouts) over the four years of high school – maybe we should have paid a little bit more attention to that.
“You lose so many kids each year, and maybe we didn’t just stop and think about it. This kind of really brings it to the forefront for us.”
Jones met with principals in June to discuss the changes, and she says they have more meetings planned in the coming weeks.
“I think this is going to be another wake up call for us,” she said. “I want the public to know that our principals and our staff are working very hard for our students.”
FIS Superintendent Rich Crowe attributes most of the change to students transferring out of the school district. He expects that the cohort model could help FIS because it accounts for students who move away.
“It is what it is, and we will just have to deal with it,” he said. “I think we do a pretty good job of keeping the kids we have control over in our district.”
The report cautions that “small student populations may experience significant percentage changes based on a few students.”
“One or two kids may skew the data big time,” Crowe said.
The Department of Education provided a list of school districts that had community factors that may have caused a loss in population over four years that negatively impacted their graduation rate. FIS wasn’t on the list.
In a recent report, the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonprofit organization that works with 16 southern states to improve public education, said that for years “states have over-reported transfers and under-reported dropouts, which produced inflated graduation rates.”
In the past, Kentucky used a “leaver rate,” a popular calculation for determining graduation rates that the Associated Press says has gained a reputation for being the most generous.
About half of states used that method last year, and it’s now being blamed for graduation rates that are dropping nationwide as states switch to the cohort method of tracking individual students.
Those states are bracing for high school graduation rates that could plummet by up to 20 percentage points, the AP reported last week.
The “leaver method” works like this: If a school has 100 graduates and 10 dropouts over the previous four years, 100 would be divided by 110, giving the school a graduation rate of 90.9 percent.
But when students disappeared, educators often classified them as transfers, even though some had actually dropped out.
Many schools weren’t required to document that transfers showed up somewhere else.
Schools didn’t lose points if students took more than four years to graduate.
Education wonks long have suspected the statistics can be manipulated using formulas that produce wildly different results.
Liz Utrup, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education, told the AP that graduation rate numbers will soon appear to decrease “across the board” as states move to the so-called “cohort graduation rate” that requires them to account for each student.
“Through this uniform method, states are raising the bar on data standards, and simply being more honest,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said.
States that converted to the cohort formula already have seen drops ranging from modest to massive. Michigan had a nearly 10-percentage point fall when they made the switch in 2007. About half of states are not yet using the cohort calculation.
All but two states — Idaho and Kentucky, which need more time to develop student tracking systems — will start submitting the new numbers to the federal government starting late this summer.
The report released today also includes for the first time graduation rates separated by race and gender. The State Journal will report those rates and their impact in Wednesday’s edition.
Averaged Freshmen Graduation Rate
Franklin County Public Schools
Class of 2010 – 77.4%
Class of 2009 – 77.9% (86.7% under old formula)
Class of 2008 – 70.3% (82.2% under old formula)
Franklin County High School
Class of 2010 – 76.2%
Class of 2009 – 77.2% (83.2% under old formula)
Class of 2008 – 71.3% (85% under old formula)
Western Hills High School
Class of 2010 – 80.5%
Class of 2009 – 80.4% (91% under old formula)
Class of 2008 – 71.5% (78% under old formula)
Frankfort Independent Schools
Class of 2010 – 69.7%
Class of 2009 – 58.2% (95.4% under old formula)
Class of 2008 – 77% (90% under old formula)
Frankfort High School
Class of 2010 – 66.3%
Class of 2009 – not reported (96.9% under old formula)
Class of 2008 – not reported (92% under old formula)
Formulas for graduation rates
Leaver rate
(used by Kentucky through 2009)
Number of students who finish high school
÷
Number of students who finish high school + number of dropouts over the last four years
Problems with the leaver rate: Dropouts were sometimes reported as transfers to another district. Students who dropped out during the summer might not be counted.
Averaged freshman graduation rate
(will be used for the graduating classes of 2010, 2011 and 2012)
Number of students who finish high school
÷
Estimated 9th grade enrollment for that class
Problems with AFGR: It does not account for transfers, and it’s still an estimate.
Cohort rate
(will be used starting with the class of 2013)
Number of students who finish high school
÷
Number of students who entered 9th grade + students who transfer into the district – students who transfer out of the district or move out of state.
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