Photo courtesy of AP

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

1. As readers know, I reported two years ago on the reality that high school exit exams are being watered down or basically rendered useless by so-called alternative methods that allow children to graduate despite being unable to pass the tests. Now the New York Times offers its own story on the same issue. Worth reading.
2. John Fensterwald notes that more districts in California signed on to the state’s ambitious Race to the Top agenda. Still, only eight of the top 10 districts (and 10 of the top 30) signed on, defying pressure from state NEA and AFT locals. Fensterwald also reports that the U.S. Department of Education official in charge of Race to the Top told a Northern California audience that she was pleasantly “stunned” by the response.
3. Speaking of districts, here’s my latest report in The American Spectator, this time on Arne Duncan, the bad news out of the Windy City about the district’s issues, and why reforming school districts (especially big urban districts) is so difficult to do.
4. And as for more Race to the Top news: Editorial pages in Boston and Buffalo advocate for their respective states to get off the wall and embrace reform. Meanwhile the AFT’s New York State affiliate is bringing out the proverbial shock troops to battle against the upcoming reform proposals, especially the lifting of the cap on charter schools. No shocker. (Thanks to Tom Carroll’s crew for the news).
5. Tom Vander Ark shakes his head at all the negative responses to California’s parent trigger law and other opposition to parental choice. Sadly, such elitism and expertist thinking is typical in education circles. And one wonders why parents struggle to be involved?
6. Graduation rate data is now streaming out of Indiana, D.C., and other states. In Milwaukee, there’s talk about forming a research and accountability group to observe the city’s woeful school system similar to the famed Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Dropout Nation Podcast. You can listen to the new one, on looking beyond Race to the Top, today.

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Scenes of the Season: New York's Waldorf-Astoria at Christmastime

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you and your families. And to those celebrating other holidays: Happy holidays to you and the ones you love.

Here is what’s going on in the dropout nation:

1. The NEA’s Los Angeles local is suing L.A. Unified over its school reform plans. John Fensterwald’s response? The suit is merely “an attempt to preserve dues-paying members.”
2. By the way: Check out my latest report, this on the pressures forcing the American Federation of Teachers to make some (small) moves towards embracing school reform, in The American Spectator.
3. Tom Vander Ark offers more thoughts on the role of entrepreneurism in education and how it can improve education for all students. He also discusses some of the changes that need to come to education philanthropy.
4. While some parents and teachers in the New York City borough of Queens are battling the closure of Jamaica High School, schools Chancellor Joel Klein isn’t backing down. Says he: “I would like to know — who would send their kid to a school that has a lower than 50 percent graduation rate. Well, if your kids wouldn’t go there, whose kids should go there?” He’s got a point.
5. The Merced Sun-Star isn’t too thrilled with the California legislature’s struggle to pass a second round of Race to the Top-related legislation. Meanwhile, in Maryland, a former state board of education member accuses Gov. Martin O’Malley of being more-interested in teachers union votes than in take advantage of the federal money to improve academic achievement.
6. And in Indiana, the state Department of Education has unveiled its plan for competing for Race to the Top dollars. It admits that it doesn’t meet many of the data system requirements. It will also require school districts to fully embrace reform in order to receive whatever RttT money the Hoosier State can muster. At least the state’s making some progress on the teacher quality front.
7. For those looking for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act data on education stimulus spending, here is the state and program data for this month (in Excel spreadsheets).
8. In Rochester, the mayor there wants to take over the city’s atrocious school district. He’ll likely have more success than his colleague in Milwaukee has had this year.
9. At EducationNews, teacher Marion Brady accuses Arne Duncan, the charter school movement and education philanthropists of attempting to “hasten the destruction of… universal, free, public schooling.” But then, Brady offers suggested reforms that would fully alter traditional public education as we know it. Enjoy.
10. Heritage Foundation’s Dan Lips reads Walter Williams’ discontent with graduation rates for blacks, then offers examples of how to improve educational achievement.
11. The Economist discusses how technology disrupted the media business — in 1845. The interesting question for education policy types and teachers should be: What technologies will disrupt education policy as we know it today.
12. U.S News & World Report looks at the role of post-Katrina New Orleans as the epicenter of the charter school movement and education reform. Slowly, the city’s education model is starting to resemble the Hollywood Model for education I touted some years ago.
13. Edurati Review offers up its best posts of 2009. One of them: A well-thought explanation of why American public education must be reformed.

Sign up for the Twitter feed for up-to-the-minute news. Also, check out Dropout Nation’s featured reports:

1. Making Families Consumers — and Kings — in Education
2. Ability Tracking: Outmoded Idea in the New Education Paradigm
3. Voices of the Dropout Nation: Walter Dozier on Education and Violence

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Good for thoroughbreds. Not for students

For those who don’t fully understand the issue of inflated graduation rate reports by state governments, here is a video produced by the Bluegrass Institute that details how Kentucky overstates its graduation rates by as much as 12 percent. If accurate school data were horses…

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Another click it, read it and weep, courtesy of the Schott Foundation.

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One could write 600 words to describe how the dropout crisis adversely affects young black males. But this map of the Dropout Nation, released last week by the Schott Foundation for Public Education as part of its annual report on low dropout rates, says far more than words ever can. Click on the map, read it and weep.

Schott Foundation's 50-state map

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"Play 01" by RiShawn Biddle

What’s going on inside — and outside — the dropout nation.

1. Grad rate inflation: One out of every three California freshmen who made up the state’s original Class of 2007 likely dropped out, according to the state Department of Education. Sure, nine percent of them are considered “completers” or having gained a GED or a certificate of completion of some kind. Either way, the reality is they are dropouts and haven’t gotten a high-quality education. Meanwhile one out of every four students in L.A. Unified’s original class of 2007 failed to graduate. Just 6.5 percent of the original class of 2007 at the Animo charter high school run by Green Dot schools — whose battles with L.A. Unified over the former’s expansion is legendary — dropped out. But for federal reporting purposes, those numbers are meaningless: Based on the federal government’s more-inflated graduation rate calculation, nearly 80 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated. How nice. The Mercury-News has more on this.
2. And for the Hoosiers out there: Here are the graduation rate stats for Indianapolis Public Schools and the state as a whole. Yes, the numbers are les miserables.
3. Meanwhile, Dan Weintraub explains in Education Next how the Terminator was laid low by the state’s powerful teachers’ unions. For Sherman Dorn, an apparent skeptic about the role of teachers’ unions in state policymaking, this may serve as another example of how teachers’ unions skillfully work the corridors of the nation’s statehouses.
4. Is improving the quality of America’s teaching corps the answer to improving education? I say it’s just one of the answers, but not the only one. And Mike Petrilli over at The Education Gadfly argues why it may not be the answer at all.
5. Intra-ed policy dust-up: EdSector’s Kevin Carey and Neil McCluskey at Cato trade shots over the latter’s most recent policy brief. Carey insists that McCluskey exemplifies that there may be a “libertarian conspiracy” to end the nation’s public education system. McCluskey accuses him of engaging in a smear campaign. I’m just going to let these guys argue among themselves.
6. Jay Greene explains why the No Child Left Behind Act isn’t, as opponents of the law claim, an unfunded mandate. Sample quote: “I do not believe that a single tenured teacher out of the more than 3 million teachers currently working in public schools has been fired, experienced a pay-cut, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned because of NCLB.” Good point.

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