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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
“Only Nevada and South Carolina Fared Worse”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s Mary MacDonald’s story about on-time graduation rates. The Education Week study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found Georgia had a 56 percent graduation rate in 2003. Georgia officials calculated a 63 percent graduation rate for the same year.
Whatever the precise number, obviously it’s just plain bad. Georgia ranked third from last, ahead of Nevada and our old friend South Carolina.
Thoughts?
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Did She Really Say “Best”???
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
People who have known me for a long time on the schools beat are surprised to see my name next to a “Best Schools” story.
When parents ask me which school I think is best, I usually trip over myself explaining why it’s an impossible question to answer without knowing what their idea of a “best school” is. Yes, I have my own ideas of what fits my bill. But that’s just my opinion, and it’s my policy not to share it for fear someone will take it as advice, enroll their child somewhere, have a bad experience and then come after me. (A little paranoid? Maybe…)
But this story was an effort to give readers what they have been asking for: a list of schools that scored the highest.
We used scale scores, not the percent of students passing or exceeding the standard. The scale score is a more precise number less subject to niggly questions such as, “What about a school that has the highest percent of kid exceeding the standard but also has a higher percent of kids not passing? Should they really be ahead of a school with a lower percent of kids exceeding the standard but everybody passing?”
My colleague Bridget asked this exact question, and from there we decided to use scale scores. There are a lot of schools bunched at the top, which means many excellent schools did not make our various lists. (We ran several lists to provide a range of schools…)
I tried to provide context in the story, including a parent who has been in the game for a long time and long ago stopped worrying about which school has the highest score. But still, this package involves lists. And, yes, the word “best” is in there, several times.
I don’t like the word. But having had a night to think about it and a morning of fielding phone calls from readers, I think we were right to use it. Maybe.
