Journal editors mistaken in belief in APS "graduation" rates

The Journal editors would like you to believe that while things aren't very much better, they are at least a little better, link.

APS’ graduation rates have gone up. They would like you to think it is because they are finally doing a better job of educating nearly 90,000 of this community’s sons and daughters.

In fact, the graduation rate went up in no small part, due to at least two mathematical manipulations. The first was to change the grad rate calculation to include students who graduated a year late. The grad rate went up, but not because students were learning any more effectively.

The second manipulation was to exclude from the calculation, students who had previously failed 9th grade. Again, the graduation rate climbed, but not because anything good was happening.

Graduation rates are a poor measure of educational effectiveness; if for no other reason than they are so easily manipulated.

A better measure is one of the actual performances of graduates. Take for example, ACT and SAT scores. They are an apparently accurate measure of the performance of the group of students who normally take them. ACT and SAT scores of APS students are static. APS graduates are not performing any better on objective testing than they used to; they aren’t getting better.

“Graduating” more students with meaningless graduation certificates is not improvement.