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School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down? Author(s): Richard Fossey Source: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Oct., 1996), pp. 140-144 Published by: Phi Delta Kappa International Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405731 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 08:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Phi Delta Kappa International is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Phi Delta Kappan. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 193.142.30.61 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:55:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?

School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?Author(s): Richard FosseySource: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Oct., 1996), pp. 140-144Published by: Phi Delta Kappa InternationalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405731 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 08:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Phi Delta Kappa International is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The PhiDelta Kappan.

http://www.jstor.org

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Page 2: School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?

School Dropout Rates

Are We Sure They Are Going Down?

BY RICHARD FOSSEY

There is disturbing evidence, Mr. Fossey avers, that in some settings at least dropout rates are higher than is generally acknowledged and may be going up.

D _ URING World War I it was said that the British War Of fice kept three separate casu alty lists: a false set to deceive the public, a second false set

to deceive the War Cabinet, and a third false set to deceive itself.'

Something similar might be said about U.S. dropout rates. The U.S. Department of Education and various education com mentators maintain that dropout rates have been going down for African Americans and the school population as a whole. Un fortunately, multiple definitions of the term dropout among states and school systems, inaccurate reporting, and a lack of stan dardized reporting procedures make it dif ficult to know for sure whether this asser tion is true. In fact, there is disturbing evi dence that, in some settings at least, drop out rates are higher than is generally ac knowledged and may be going up.

Conventional Wisdom

According to the National Center for

RICHARD FOSSEYis an associate profes sor in the Department of Administrative and Foundational Services, Louisiana State Uni versity, Baton Rouge. He would like to thank Philip Burch, Jack Frymier, and Susan Teddlie for their comments on earlier drafts of this ar ticle.

tyl.

Education Statistics (NCES), the nation's dropout rate has been coming down and has stabilized. In the 1995 edition of the Digest of Education Statistics, the NCES reported that 10.5% of the population seg

ment between the ages of 16 and 24 are high school dropouts, defined as persons who are not high school graduates and who are not enrolled in school. Among African

Americans, the dropout figure for this age group is slightly higher - 12.6%.2 These figures are a significant improvement over those of 20 years ago, when 14.3% of per sons between the ages of 16 and 24 were dropouts and 21.2% of the African Amer

icans in this age group were high school noncompleters.3

A higher percentage of urban youths than youths from the general population drop out of school, but urban districts al so report declining dropout rates. In 1994 the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) reported that annual dropout rates in the central cities had declined over a two-year period from 5.7% to 4.9%.4 Lat er that year the CGCS reported that 90% of its members reported a decline in their four-year dropout rate over a one-year pe riod.5 Annual dropout rates went down as

well, averaging 4.9% for CGCS members

140 PHI DELTA KAPPAN Illustration by Jem Sullivan

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Page 3: School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?

in 1992-93, only slightly higher than the national rate.

In general, educational researchers agree with the NCES and the CGCS that the drop outproblem is under control. Researchers for Sandia National Laboratories conclud ed in 1993 that the "on-time" graduation rate from traditional high schools has held at a steady 75% over 30 years.6

A declining or stable dropout rate is par ticularly good news in light of the discour aging data we are receiving on the deteri orating condition of American children, especially in the inner cities. We know, for example, that the number of children born to unmarried mothers has grown to epi demic proportions over the past 20 years,7 that the percentage of children living in poverty is going up, and that increasing numbers of children are exposed to vio lence, either in the home or in their neigh borhoods. If schools are improving their graduation rates in spite of these disturb ing trends, it is a tribute to the creativity and dedication of school leaders nation wide.

Moreover, declining dropout rates at least partly justify public education's ris ing costs. As Richard Rothstein has point ed out, it makes sense for schools to have increased their spending over the past two decades, since they are retaining a larger percentage of children through the high school years.8

Disquieting Evidence About Graduation Rates

At the same time that the Department of Education has been expressing opti

mism about school dropout rates, disturb ing evidence is emerging that graduation rates are going down in some states and cities. In Ohio, for example, on-time grad uation rates dropped from 77.2% in 1993 to 74.8% in 1994.9 And in Florida 73% of the state's ninth-graders graduated on time in 1995, adrop of sixpercentage points over five years.10

These are recent developments, but some commentators noticed declining gradua tion rates as early as the mid-1980s. In 1985

Harold Hodgkinson observed that the na tion's on-time graduation rate had dropped over a five-year period.'1 Hodgkinson pre dicted that high school retention rates would continue going down because of rising numbers of at-risk youths.

In addition, several states saw their grad

uation rates decline during the 1980s. Ac cording to researchers from the Consor tium for Policy Research in Education, the percentage of Florida and Georgia ninth graders who graduated on time went down between 1984 and 1988.12 NewYork's grad uation rate dropped about eight percent age points between 1970-71 and 1987-88.'3

And in Louisiana, 66.5% of a cohort of ninth-graders graduated on time in 1973, while only 56.1% graduated on time in 1993.14

At the school district level, the evidence is spotty, but some urban districts began to experience declining graduation rates during the 1980s. New York City's grad uation rate dropped from 60.3% in 1971

How did we lower

the nation's dropout

rates over the last

two decades without

improving on-time

graduation rates?

It's quite simple.

to 47.8% in 1988.'5 In New Orleans, the percentage of ninth-graders who gradu ated with their classmates dropped from 66% in 1973 to 46% two decades later.16 According to a recent newspaper report, Los Angeles' graduation rates have been declining over a 15-year period, beginning in the early 1980s.'7 Indeed, as a whole, the U.S. has made virtually no progress in improving on-time graduation rates since the 1970s.18

Comparing Apples and Oranges

How did we lower the nation's dropout rates over the last two decades without im proving on-time graduation rates? ft's really quite simple.

First, many high school students who fail to graduate on time eventually get a high school credential. About half a mil lion noncompleters, many of them older

than the typical high school graduate, re ceived General Education Development (GED) diplomas in 1994. Each individ ual who receives a GED diploma lowers the dropout rate for the general popula tion.

Second, some school districts have cut their dropout rates by offering various al ternative programs for at-risk students, in cluding 13th- and 14th-year enrollment op tions. On average, these programs haven't improved on-time graduation rates, but they have increased the number of students who stay in school longer. Many of these linger ing students eventually obtain high school diplomas.

In short, the percentage of students who graduate on time has remained unchanged for two decades, but the percentage of non completers who eventually get a high school credential - through a GED or some oth er alternative program - increases a bit each year. Thus when we measure drop out rates for persons 16 through 24 years of age - as NCES does - we see incre mental improvements in the dropout prob lem.

Inaccurate and Nonstandardized Reporting

Varied definitions account for some, but not all, of the confusion about student outcomes. Inaccurate reporting by school districts and nonstandardized reporting procedures also contribute to the problem.

First of all, there is no question that procedures for reporting dropout rates are flawed in many school districts, under

mining the accuracy of the data. In a 1987 article, Margaret LeCompte and Stephen

Goebel pointed out that dropout data were biased and skewed as a result of the way school districts collected and maintained them. Some progress has been made since then, but many districts continue to use flawed record-keeping procedures. Le

Compte and Goebel recommended that an auditing process be conducted in dis tricts where dropout rates are not charac teristic of the populations they serve. Dis tricts with high minority enrollments and low dropout rates and districts showing great fluctuations from year to year should be considered suspect, according to these commentators. '9

Occasionally a school district's report ed dropout rate is so wildly improbable as to be ridiculous. In 1993, for example, a

OCTOBER 1996 141

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Page 4: School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?

Louisiana school district of 29,000 students calculated its annual dropout rate at two tenths of 1% - only 22 students in grades 7 through 12 had dropped out of school. Since 37% of a cohort of ninth-graders failed to graduate on time that year, the district's report was surely wrong. And the following year, the report was even more incredible. In 1994 the district reported that its dropout rate had declined to near ly zero - only two students dropped out.

A close examination of the dropout analysis of the Council of the Great City Schools renders it questionable as well. In 1994 the council reported that 90% of its member districts experienced a decline in their four-year dropout rates during the previous year. However, the CGCS report published the four-year dropout experi ences of only about half of its members. In fact, for 10 of the 47 member districts, the CGCS provided no dropout data what soever. Several of the nonreporting dis tricts are known to have extremely high dropout rates. Thus it is quite possible that dropout rates among the CGCS members are higher than the CGCS report indicat ed.

For example, the CGCS report con tained no four-year dropout data for the

District of Columbia school system, which had an on-time graduation rate of only 50.6% in 1991, lower than the average of any state.20 In addition, CGCS reported no dropout information for Philadelphia, which has an on-time completion rate of less than 50%, according to a New York Times report,21 or for Detroit and New Or leans, two other CGCS members with very high dropout rates.

But it is not only individual districts that are inadequately reporting on dropout rates. Some state-level dropout reports may be unreliable as well. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Louisiana's on-time graduation rate is the worst in the nation,22 but the state education department main tains that the state's annual dropout rate is only slightly above the national aver age. And a study in New Jersey found that the rates published by the New Jersey De partment of Education failed to reflect high student attrition rates in the state's urban school systems.23

In addition to inaccurate reporting, wide variations in the way dropout information is collected make it difficult to determine the true dropout situation. Again, the 1994

CGCS report provides illustrations. In that

report, Chicago calculated its four-year dropout rate at 45.2%, NewYork City report ed a 15.4% rate, and Buffalo announced a figure of only 4.3%. All three districts have similar demographics high percent ages of minority children and children liv ing in poverty. No one seriously contends that Chicago's dropout rate is three times higher than New York's or that Buffalo's is less than one-tenth of Chicago's. These extreme variations must be the result of dif ferent definitions and measurement tech niques.

Likewise, several CGCS districts re ported wide swings in their dropout rates over a one-year period. One urban district reported that its annual dropout rate de clined by 60% in a year, and several oth ers reported increases in the range of 50%. It seems unlikely that conditions in these districts changed so radically over a one year period. These dramatic fluctuations are probably at least partly the result of changing definitions or changing proce dures for tracking dropouts.

Why Aren't We Doing a Better Job of Tracking Dropouts?

Our society would not tolerate the con fusion about dropouts if the commodity being measured were money instead of children. When managing their fiscal af fairs, most school districts adhere to stan dard accounting practices that ensure a high degree of accuracy. Why aren't we doing a better job of tracking students?

Embarrassment may be one reason. Dropout rates in the large urban districts are quite high, higher than many educa tors want to admit. Some districts have con structed obscure dropout definitions and

measurement techniques that hide the fact

that large numbers of students fail to grad uate on time. Some districts count GED re cipients to pad their graduation rates. Oth ers allow students to enroll for a 13th and even a 14th year, which can make it dif ficult to compare student outcomes among districts.

Unrealistic accountability standards may also contribute to the problem. In the fer vor of school reform, state legislatures and school boards set lofty goals for improving student outcomes, often setting arbitrary deadlines for raising student test scores, improving attendance, or lowering drop out rates. In many cases, these deadlines are impossible to meet, and school leaders

may tinker with measurement techniques or the definitions of student outcomes in order to improve otherwise bleak results.

Finally, some districts, particularly our hard-pressed urban systems, may uncon sciously be engaging in triage.24 Over

whelmed by the large numbers of at-risk students - children with discipline prob lems, learning disabilities, and unmet emo tional needs - educators may simply be concentrating on the ones they think are the most likely to succeed. Schools may be allowing marginal students to slip quiet ly away, or they may encourage some stu dents to leave through suspensions, expul sions, and grade retentions. If this is the case, then it should not be surprising that the procedures for tracking these "lost children" are flawed.

Why Does It Matter?

Why is it important to get better infor mation about graduation rates? There are several reasons.

Assessing the effect of increased re sources. First, accurate dropout informa

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142 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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Page 5: School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?

tion is useful for assessing whether we are using educational resources effectively. The nation has increased spending on educa tion substantially over the past 25 years, and we need to know whether this money was invested wisely.

A recent study by the Economic Poli cy Institute (EPI) illustrates how accurate information about graduation rates can be

helpful. According to the EPI report, real dollar spending increased an average of 61% in nine representative school districts during the 25-year period between 1967 and 1991.25 In Los Angeles, the largest district in the EPI study, real spending in creased 65% during this 25-year period. In Baton Rouge, the second largest dis trict in the study, the real dollar increase

was 53%. The EPI report, which did not investi

gate graduation rates, lends support to the view that U.S. school districts have made modest increases in education spending over a quarter of a century and have made modest progress in improving student out comes. However, a look at long-term grad uation rates in the cities that EPI studied

might alter that conclusion. In Los An

geles, graduation rates dropped from 63% to 52% between 1980 and 1990.26 In Baton

Rouge, on-time graduation rates fell dur ing the period of EPI's study - from 73% in 1967 to 62.2% 25 years later.27

This disturbing finding does not mean that resources were expended foolishly in

Los Angeles and Baton Rouge. On the con trary, the condition of children in these ur ban areas may have deteriorated faster than the districts could develop compensating interventions. Nevertheless, an accurate on-time graduation rate is useful informa tion when evaluating the effect of increased resources on student outcomes.

Comparing school districts' perform ance. We also need accurate and standard ized dropout information to compare school districts' performance with regard to stu dent outcomes. Such comparisons would be extremely important in this era of school reform and educational experimentation.

For example, Rochester (NewYork) City Schools, a district with high numbers of disadvantaged children, began a national ly publicized shared decision-making ini tiative in the late 1980s. Now that this ini tiative has been in place for several years, it would be useful to know whether the reforms have reduced the district's drop out rate as compared to other urban dis

tricts with similar student populations. According to the CGCS report, Roch

ester's annual dropout rate was 7.9% in 1993, considerably higher than NewYork

City's 4.6% annual rate and the Buffalo district's 4.5% annual rate. But it seems very unlikely that Buffalo and New York, with high numbers of impoverished stu dents, have annual dropout rates that ap proximate the national average, and it seems even more unlikely that Buffalo's annual dropout rate is almost identical to its four year rate, which is what it reported to the Council of the Great City Schools. We can have no confidence that a comparison be tween Rochester's dropout rate and the

Buffalo and New York rates would yield any useful information.

Identifying crisis communities. Inaccu rate reports may fail to identify school sys tems in which dropout rates are quite high and so lull educators into believing that educational outcomes are better than they actually are. Particularly disturbing is the disparity between the dropout rates that urban districts acknowledge and the rates

published by the media and other outside sources.

For example, New York City acknowl edges a four-year dropout rate of 15%, but a 1995 Kappan article reported that only 44.3% of New York City high school stu dents graduated after four years.28 New Or leans acknowledges an annual dropout rate of 9.7%,29 but 55% of a cohort of New Or leans ninth-graders failed to graduate on time.30

The variations between dropout rates that school districts report and those re ported by outside sources are not merely differences in definition - they often de scribe totally different realities. When on time graduation rates slip to 50%, which is the case in many urban districts (Kansas

City, New Orleans, Hartford, and Wash ington, D.C., to name a few), a serious prob lem exists. And when one considers that a third or more of the urban students who graduate from urban schools often fail to read at grade level, it is not too much to say that public education in the inner cities iS in crisis.

Informing the policy debate on school conditions. Finally, inaccurate dropout da ta are not credible and thus are easily dis counted in exchanges about the condition of the schools. The education communi ty is currently engaged in a heated debate about the quality of American education;

some maintain that deteriorating education al outcomes have put the nation "at risk,"

while others argue that the so-called ed

ucation crisis has been manufactured for political purposes.3' Obviously, a correct assessment of these two views depends on accurate data.

What Needs to Be Done?

To get better dropout information, pub lic education needs a single, easily under stood, and reliable indicator of student at trition, one that would allow comparisons to be made among school districts in dif ferent states. Commentators have stressed the need for such an indicator for almost 10 years.32

A good start has been made in this di rection. Since 1992 states have been report ing district-level dropout information to

NCES. Forty-three states provided drop out information for the 1991-92 school year, and 14 of those states complied sufficient ly with NCES guidelines that their drop out data could be compared. Eventually,

most if not all states will be providing NCES with standardized dropout infor mation.

Even when this situation occurs, how ever - and it may be years before we have standardized dropout reports across all 50 states - we still won't know all we need to know about dropouts. Since the NCES dropout data are based on districts' self reporting, we will continue to have prob lems getting accurate information. As the

CGCS report on urban dropout rates shows, school district self-reporting is often un reliable.

Moreover, NCES reports the percent age of students in grades 7-12 who drop out of school in a given school year. While this is useful information, we also need to know the graduation rates for specific groups of students, and we need to be able to compare those rates for districts in dif ferent states.

A good supplement to the NCES drop out data would be a cohort dropout rate, which would measure the percentage of each district's ninth-graders who graduate on time from high school. Such a measure has two attractions. First, it is difficult to manipulate, since the numbers of ninth graders and of high school graduates are easily verifiable. Second, it gives a clear picture of a ninth-grader's chance of grad uating on time in a particular district.

OCTOBER 1996 143

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Page 6: School Dropout Rates: Are We Sure They Are Going down?

Inadequate dropout

information makes it

difficult to evaluate

school reform efforts

or to compare one

school district's

program with another's.

If a cohort rate were calculated for all school districts nationwide, it would be possible to compare Los Angeles' on-time graduation rate with New York's rate or the rates in Rochester and in Miami. As the CGCS report demonstrates, this is not something we can do now.

A cohort dropout rate has some draw backs, however. A significant limitation is the fact that some students who leave school between the ninth grade and grad uation are not dropouts. Some transfer to other school systems or enlist in vocation al programs. Counting such individuals as dropouts overstates a district's attrition rate, at least when the students who transfer out of a school system outnumber the ones who transfer in.

Nevertheless, a cohort rate is a rough calculation of a student's chance of being successful in a particular school district.

An adjustment could easily be made for students who transfer in and out of school districts. As for other school leavers those who enter GED programs, for ex

ample - a school district would not be

prejudiced if these individuals were count ed as dropouts. In fact, such persons are dropouts - at least in the sense that they left a traditional high school program pri or to graduation.

Conclusion The common assumption that the na

tion's high school dropout rate is going down may not be true in some settings. On-time graduation rates in urbanl districts are unacceptably low, refulting claims that

school reform efforts have been success ful in the inner cities. Evidence abounds that school districts and even some states are reporting inaccurate dropout infor

mation. A lack of standardized definitions and reporting procedures has contributed to the confusion.

Inadequate dropout information makes it difficult to evaluate school reform ef forts or to compare one school district's education program with another's. Under stating the dropout problem, which is com

mon in big city districts, has concealed the crisis in urban schools, where as many as half of the students either drop out or grad uate without basic skills.

African American schoolchildren are probably most harmed by inaccurate drop out information. It is in urban school sys tems, where a majority of African Ameri can children attend school, that the con trast between published dropout reports and reality is most stark. We are not like ly to improve educational outcomes for

African American children until we ac curately assess the urban dropout problem and address it as the crisis that it is.

Of course, addressing the dropout cri sis involves more than designing a better student-tracking system. We need to de velop better strategies for helping poten tial dropouts be successful. But assessing the scope of the dropout problem and ad

mitting its true dimensions are necessary first steps.

1. Alistair Home, The Price of Glory (Harmonds worth, England: Penguin Books, 1962). 2. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest

of Education Statistics 1995 (Washington, D.C.:

U.S. Department of Education, 1995), p. 110.

3. Ibid.

4. Council of the Great City Schools, "Dropouts in

Great City Schools," Urban Indicator, June 1994,

pp. 1-8.

5. National Urban Education Goals: 1992-1993 In

dicators Report (Washington, D.C.: Council of the

Great City Schools, 1994).

6. Charles C. Carson, Robert M. Huelskamp, and

Thomas D. Woodall, "Perspectives on Education in

America," Journal oj Educational Research, vol. 86,

1993, pp.259-310. 7. Population Profile of the United States 1995 (Wash

ington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995). 8. Richard Rothstein, "The Myth of Public School

Failure," American Prospect, Spring 1993, pp. 20

34.

9. Catherine Candisky, "Governor Says Schools Bet ter But Still Have 'Long, Long Way to Go,'

" Colum

bus (Ohio) Dispatch, 30 September 1990, p. 4-C.

10. Linda K. Wertheimer and John Kennedy, "Few er High School Students Graduate: Latest Statistics

Called 'Alarming,'" Orlando Sentinel Tribune, 6

December 1995, p. D-l.

11. Harold L. Hodgkinson, All One System: Demo

graphics of Education, Kindergarten Through Grad uate School (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Edu

cational Leadership, 1985). 12. William A. Firestone et al., Education Reform

from 1983 to 1990: State Action and District Re

sponse (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Policy Re

search in Education, Rutgers University, Report No.

RR-021,1991). 13. New York: The State of Learning: A Report to

the Governor and the Legislature on the Educa

tional Status of the State's Schools (Albany: State

University of New York/State Education Depart ment, 1990), p. 180.

14. Annual Financial and Statistical Report (Baton

Rouge: Louisiana Department of Education, 1969

70,1972-73,1989-90, 1992-93). 15. New York: The State of Learning, p. 180.

16. Annual Financial and Statistical Report. 17. Beth Shuster, "School Truancy Exacts a Grow

ing Social Price," Los Angeles Times, 28 June 1995,

p.A-1. 18. National Center for Education Statistics, p. 108.

19. Margaret D. LeCompte and Stephen D. Goebel, "Can Bad Data Produce Good Program Planning?

An Analysis of Record-Keeping on School Drop outs," Education and Urban Society, vol. 19,1987,

pp. 250-68.

20. Kids Count Data Book: State Profiles of Child

Well-Being (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation,

1994), p. 138.

21. William Celis 3d, "Education Consultant Faces

Career Challenge as Philadelphia School Chief," New York Times, 22 March 1995, p. B-7.

22. Kids Count Data Book, p. 138.

23. Philip Burch, The Dropout Problem in New Jer

sey's Big Urban Schools: Educational Inequality and Governmental Inaction (New Brunswick, N.J.:

Bureau of Government Research, Rutgers Univer

sity, 1992).

24. James M. McClure, "The Lost Children: A Mil

itary Concept for the Educational Arena," Educa

tion, vol. 104, 1987, pp. 38-43.

25. Richard Rothstein with Karen H. Miles, Where's the Money Gone? Changes in the Level and Com

position of Education Spending (Washington, D. C: Economic Policy Institute, 1995). 26. Shuster, op. cit.

27. Annual Financial and Statistical Report (Baton

Rouge: Louisiana Department of Education, 1963

64, 1966-67, 1988-89, 1991-92). 28. Mark F. Goldberg, "Education in New York

City: An Interview with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani," Phi Delta Kappan, December 1995, p. 318.

29.1993-1994 Louisiana Progress Profiles State Re

port (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Department of Edu

cation, 1995). 30. Richard Fossey and Jim Garvin, "Cooking the

Books on High School Dropout Rates," Education

Week, 22 February 1995, p. 48.

31. David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Man

ufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on

America's Public Schools (Reading, Mass.: Addi

son-Wesley, 1995). 32. Patricia A. Williams, Standardizing School Drop out Measures (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Pol

icy Research in Education, Rutgers University, Re

port No. RR-003,1987); and LeCompte and Goebel,

op. cit. K

144 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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