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Monday, July 30, 2007
Grad Coaches: Do You Believe The Hype?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Late last week, Gov. Sonny Perdue spoke to 450 middle school graduation coaches at a summer training conference in Macon.
The men and women represent the first group of graduation coaches whose job will be to prepare sixth, seventh and eighth-graders for success in high school and beyond.
You may recall that Perdue created the graduation coach position (originally called “completion counselors”) as part of his 2006 election-year education agenda. Initially, the program was only for high school students. But during the campaign Perdue said the initiative was so successful (although it was barely two months old) that he vowed to extend it to middle schools if re-elected.
Earlier this year, Perdue made good on that promise by setting aside $18 million to expand the program for the coming school year. Now we have one graduation coach for every public middle school in Georgia.
Perdue and his staff have been talking up this program from the get-go, and Friday’s press release about the governor’s appearance in Macon was no exception.
According to the release, about 65 percent of the seniors helped by graduation coaches this year earned diplomas. That’s fewer than the 71 percent of the total senior class who graduated. But the governor’s scribes didn’t mention that.
Instead, they boasted that 65 percent was”higher than the graduation rate for all students in 2002.”
I found this statement a bit odd. So I called the governor’s press office to find out why they were comparing student performance this year to kids who graduated five years ago.
“We’re just pointing out that it’s a number that we think is a pretty positive step in the right direction,” Bert Brantley, one of the governor’s spokesmen, said. “We’re graduating more at-risk seniors than we did all students just five years ago.”
A valid comparison or just more graduation coach hype?
