Monday, May 11, 2009

Are Bloomberg and Klein lying about graduation rates?

From the Times Ledger:

The city Department of Education and the public advocate’s office are at odds over whether city graduation rates have been inflated during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure after Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum released a report last Thursday that calls into question why discharged students are not counted in graduation rate statistics.

Graduation rates have skyrocketed 12 percentage points from 51 percent in 2002, when Bloomberg took control of the schools, to 63 percent in 2007, according to city statistics.

Written by Jennifer Jennings, a doctoral student at Columbia University, and Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, a group that advocates for more checks on mayoral control of schools, the report states these graduation numbers would be “substantially” lower should the statistics include discharged students, or pupils who leave the school system without graduating.

Students can be labeled as discharged for a wide variety of reasons, including transferring to a school outside the city or entering a parochial institution.

The number of students discharged rose from 17.5 percent for the graduating class of 2000 to more than 20 percent for the class of 2007.

DOE spokesman Andy Jacob said more than 90 percent of discharges are students who leave for benign reasons, such as moving out of the city.

But critics of the school system said school officials can misuse the discharge policy and enter student drop−outs as discharges in order to artificially inflate the graduation rate.

11 comments:

steve said...

While we're at it. I do not believe COMPSTAT for a goddamn second. How perfect is it that crime in every category is so significantly down this year. Gimme a freakin break. Is there any possible way to expose the truth about this to the public? Step up Thompson. You probably can find out some how. On second thought, maybe not the way this cocksucker owns everything and everybody...

Anonymous said...

Nyc schools teach kids to pass tests,instead of teaching them yo think!............another sort of compstat.

Anonymous said...

Of course Bum-turd is lying...the same way that he manufactures his phony "popularity" polls!

And Klein is Der Fuhrer Mike's soft boiled egg.

He follows his orders like a good obedient little party member otherwise the mayor's spoon breaks through Joel's shell and scrambles his yolk!

Frank said...

I'm usually the first one to bitch about Bloomy's B.S. but if these discharged students are mostly moving out of state or switching to private schools I have no problem with not including them in the graduation numbers. In fact, I don't think discharged students should ever have been included (if they included before) since they will most likely graduate somewhere else.

Mykul Bluumbirg said...

What me worry?

At least I gotz my edukayshun!

Anonymous said...

Bloombutt and Klein up to their old tricks again!

Taxpayer said...

Question: Who is the person at the top of the chain of command over the people who maintain the education stats?

Does that person have the ability (power) to alter the career (and pay) of the keepers of the stats?

Is it in the interest of the top person to alter the education stats to look better?

Would that person indeed alter the stats to look better?

Is that person the Commissar?

Can we ever trust the Commissar to be honest?

Should we vote for someone more honest to keep those stats? Should we vote for that new person on November 3?

Anonymous said...

So just to get this straight...

If a report came out and said there was no improvement....Bloomberg did a bad job.

Worse results...Bloomberg did a bad job

Good Results... He is lying.

Like another poster on here, if they legitimately moved to another school, they should not be counted. There is no proof even in the article saying that the numbers were inflated. And if they were lying... wouldnt you want to raise it a little more than 60%. To me, it still seems kind of bad.

Anonymous said...

So just to get this straight...
To me, it still seems kind of bad.


Do you really expect the bozos around here to follow that sort of sensible argument?

Anonymous said...

Well, you don't want to make it too obvious. Just talk vaguely about percentages. People won't catch on.

Queens Crapper said...

this also seems realistic...