You can't solve a problem if you don't recognize or admit it. This country apparently has a problem in that we really don't know how many kids drop out of high school. When we report to the federal government under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, we report one number. When we report to the state government, we report a different - lower - number. For example, California tells the Feds 83% of their students graduate from high school, on its web site it says 67% have graduated.
Although the governors of all 50 states have agreed to standardize on a calculation, there is not yet a uniform method of calculating a dropout rate. New Mexico's rate is the number of seniors who graduate, ignoring the number of students who started school four years earlier. And, once more, NCLB is blamed because it did not set a goal for a graduation rate.
The good news is that some states have agreed that they have a problem and are starting to do something about it. North Carolina has adopted the governors' calculations and was shocked to realize that their graduation rate under the governors formula was 68%, under the old formula it was 95%.
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