Data Organizing Psychological Test

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Admin
Data Organizing Psychological Test

Data Organizing Psychological Test

Many states are coming up with different statistics on the dropout rates.

No Child Left Behind

States are to report graduation rates to Washington D.C. as part of No Child Left Behind accountability. Unfortunately, there is no standard method of calculating the data. Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education, is considering a federal formula that all schools would have to use for reporting.

Graduation Discrepancies

Keeping track of whom graduates is a complicated task. Students are mobile and in a large school with transient populations, the task of accurately keeping track of each student would be overwhelming. A common practice is to take the number of seniors, subtract the students that moved. On graduation day the difference is the percentage of dropouts, right? Wrong. Many students drop out in the junior year, sophomore year and even the freshman year.

A conservative research organization, the Manhattan Institute, did its own calculations of graduation rates. The institute went back to the nations 8th grade population and compared it to the senior year graduation rate five years later. It had been common knowledge that the graduation rate was around 86%. However, when Jay P. Greene at the institute calculated the data closely, he learned that the national graduation rate was closer to 71%.