Over on the StatChat blog, Hamilton Lombard draws attention to the steady rise in high school graduation rates across Virginia. The percentage of graduating seniors was significantly higher in 2013 than 2008 for all major ethnic groups, most appreciably for blacks and Hispanics. That’s good news, as Lombard says, because a high school diploma opens up opportunities for higher paying jobs. This, along with the plummeting rate of teen pregnancies and drop in youth, bodes well for the employment prospects of lower-income citizens.
It’s less than clear, however, what accounts for the surge in graduation rates. Lombard doesn’t have a definitive answer. He suggests a possible link to the decline in teen pregnancies and youth crime, which allow students to remain in school and stay on track to graduate. Also, he observes, high youth unemployment rates may reduce the appeal of dropping out.
It’s even possible that drop-out prevention programs are working. However, there is one factor that I fear may account for much of the seeming improvement: Schools are engaging in more social promotion. The more the drop-out rate is followed as a measure of school performance, the more administrators have an incentive to push students through the system whether they meet the grade or not. We have seen how school officials increasingly encourage “teaching to the test” to improve standardized test scores. It should not surprise us if they were gaming the system to improve graduation rates as well.
Let me emphasize: I do not know that to be a fact. I hope that my fears are misplaced. But I think it’s something we need to dig into before we congratulate ourselves on the awesome improvement we’re seeing. We do no one any favors by giving students a degree if they have not mastered the body of knowledge required of a graduate — not employers, not students, not society at large.
— JAB
