Feds Will Make Florida Face Up To High School Graduation Failures

Finally, someone plans to tell it like it is about the nation's dismal high-school graduation rates.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, tired of statistical spinning, is crafting a rule that would standardize the calculation of graduation rates. By making this move, Spellings puts states like Florida on notice that success can no longer be overstated.

Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith faces a choice. He can put Florida out front with an honest graduation rate - one that doesn't include students who later earn a General Educational Development certificate. Or he can let the feds do it for him.

The new commissioner should do away with Florida's dirty little secret. Earning a GED certificate is not the same thing as fulfilling the requirements for a high school diploma. Yet Florida continues to count the state diplomas awarded to those who pass the GED test as regular high school graduates.

Florida should own up and tell citizens the truth - our high schools are not as successful as the state has reported.

Indeed, Florida's Department of Education routinely reports a graduation rate as much as 10 points higher than what researchers have found.

The Manhattan Institute, which doesn't include GEDs, put Florida's graduation rate at 59 percent in its 2005 study. And researchers at Johns Hopkins last year arrived at roughly the same percentage, tagging Florida and South Carolina high schools as the worst "dropout factories" in the nation. By their accounts, half of Florida's high schools earned that disturbing moniker.

As Spellings notes, a glaring weakness in the No Child Left Behind law is that it allows states to create their own formula for determining graduation rates.

Florida isn't alone in its manipulation of the loophole. New York, North Carolina and New Mexico also constructed formulas that exaggerate their success, the New York Times reports.

Three years ago, the National Governors Association signed a 50-state compact agreeing to a uniform calculation for high school graduation rates. The formula would divide the number of on-time graduates by the number of ninth-graders who entered four years earlier. Quite fairly, the governors' formula allowed separate calculations for children in special education or those learning English, since they need extra time.

Despite the compact, Florida stuck to its flawed formula in reporting graduation rates to the public.

The Department of Education says it counts GEDs in its calculation because until 2002, the formula was written into law. Since then, it has wanted to be consistent.

They should be introduced to the asterisk.