Chicago Sun-Times: Fewer city high school grads than claimed

[Tweed]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-grad03.html

"Only 54 percent of Chicago public high school students graduate in four years -- an alarmingly low rate that has been masked for years by misleading state calculations, a new study contended Wednesday.

Although Chicago's graduation rate has improved over time, it is far lower than the 70.7 percent state officials claimed this year, the study found. And the true rate for black male students is particularly dismal -- at 39 percent, experts said.

The University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research issued the sobering new statistics Wednesday, challenging the way the Illinois State Board of Education has been reporting its four-year high school graduation rate.

Illinois' method of calculating graduates is so prone to manipulation that "there could be some schools cooking the books'' here, said consortium researcher Elaine Allensworth. Most of the inaccuracy comes from the way the state counts high school transfer students, she said. Transfers who drop out of their new schools are not counted as dropouts anywhere. But transfers who graduate are counted as graduates of their new schools."


I'm taking an education class right now. It's so frustrating that city school systems can't seem to get things done. Alot of it has to do with the fact that the schools are getting equal funding or even less funding than suburban schools when the city schools need the funding the most. The buildings don't do everything, but when a school has to pay so much money on maintenance of the school, that drives other things down.

Try running a corporate business or a bank in a run down warehouse and try to succeed. It's insane.