State card series updates Mass. high school ratings

LYNN – The Alliance for Excellent Education has released an updated 2008 state report card, providing data and statistics regarding Massachusetts high schools and their students.Now in its fourth year of publication, the state card series offers an overview of relevant high school statistics and other information, often used by lawmakers, funding organizations and the Department of Education.While Massachusetts is one of the top states in the country when it comes to test scores and academic progress toward No Child Left Behind, the state’s dropout rates leave quite a bit to be desired.According to the state report card, the Commonwealth ranks 23rd in the nation in dropout rates, with an estimated 73.2 percent four-year graduation rate. That number is determined through an independent agency that takes into account statistics provided by both the Massachusetts and U.S. Department of Education.The statistics reported by those two agencies differ greatly, however, with Massachusetts officials reporting a 96.2 percent graduation rate while the U.S. DOE rates the state’s high school students at a 79.3 percent clip.The report card further breaks down dropout rates by finding schools that are considered “dropout factories,” where four-year graduation rates have dropped below 60 percent.According to the Alliance Web site, official dropout statistics are rarely accurate, but working with Johns Hopkins University the organization has compiled a “promoting power” database, which keeps a constant tab on the number of students enrolled at a school as seniors, compared to the total number of students who enrolled in that same school four years earlier as freshmen.According to the statistics, Lynn’s high schools are teetering on the edge of becoming “dropout factories,” although the numbers may not be as accurate because the number of students who change schools or move in and out of the city is higher than many other areas.Lynn Classical had the highest promoting power rating at 84.07, followed by Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute at 63.39 percent and Lynn English at 61.58 percent.The Alliance admits that the numbers are not totally accurate, and says on its Web site that the ultimate goal is to have the best graduation rates at every high school in the country.The Alliance argues that high dropout rates have a strong negative effect on the economy, costing the state $5.8 billion in loss of lifetime earnings from 2007 high school dropouts.The report card also says that the state would save $363 million in lifetime health care costs and $57.1 million per year in community and state college remediation costs.Again rating the state as a whole, the Alliance identified 10 specific areas that make a high school successful, and rated the state in those 10 areas.Massachusetts passed in eight of the 10 sections, including the ability to track individual students over time, identify student demographic information, track students’ test records to measure academic growth, knowing which students have been tested, recording information on student college readiness including SAT scores, recording student-level drop out data, match student records between grades K-12 and higher education systems and the ability to evaluate data system quality.