Giving Compass' Take:

• The authors shed light on the troubling metrics that educators and policymakers use to decide if a school is successful or not based on graduation rates ignoring underlying factors. 

• What are ways educators can thoroughly analyze high school graduation metrics? How would redefining the system of success for K-12 schools benefit parents? 

• Read about the high cost for low graduation rates. 


Educators, policymakers, and parents often assume graduation rates are the best indicators of school performance. U.S. News & World Report, for example, ranks the nation’s high schools largely based on their reported four-year cohort graduation rates. But these rankings miss a critical point: the relationship between mobility and graduating.

The crucial distinction between the so-called best and worst schools is the vast difference in student mobility — the rate at which students enter or leave a school. When mobility is factored into graduation rates, the simple black-and-white comparison becomes a complex shade of gray.

If the student fails to graduate on time, only the last school he or she attended is rated poorly for the student’s “failure.” The calculation does not factor in whether the student may have come to the school credit-deficient or already failing, with no chance to graduate in June of senior year.

One solution is to calculate how many students in grades 9-12 accumulated an adequate number of credits during the year. This holds all schools responsible for every student, every year, and creates a more accurate measurement of school success.

Schools with high mobility often have many credit-deficient students (many of them from their first day at that school) who are unlikely to graduate on time. Holding schools accountable for credit accumulation ensures attention is given to the problem before it is too late.

Rather than relying so heavily on simple four-year graduation rates as a means of identifying the “best” and “worst” high schools, we need to understand the limitations of the metric fully.

Read the full article about graduation rates and student mobility by Steve Werlein and Mary Gifford at |The 74