Note to Drudge and Malkin: Do The Math on Education

[kerrygoddess]

Note to Drudge and Malkin: Do The Math on Education
February 1st, 2006 @ 3:26 pm

Both Drudge and Michelle Malkin are making an issue out of what was obviously a mis-speak this morning by John Kerry on the Today Show and the wingnuts have joined in the chorus. It was evident that Kerry gave Couric a bit of thrashing... an now the wingnuts are protesting.

Malkin quotes Kerry saying this morning, “53 percent of our children don’t graduate from high school.” He then goes on to say “Kids don’t have after-school programs.”

Could it be that Kerry was referring to lower income kids and their parents, that rely on after-school programs? You know the ones who’s parents can’t afford college, the ones that rely on Pell Grants — “Only 9 percent of the people eligible in America will be able to get Pell Grants this year, and for the fifth year in a row they’re not going to raise the amount of money to help kids who have a 57 percent increase in their costs of education be able to pay for it.”

Drudge and Malkin dredged up up the 2003 Census Report that shows “that 84 percent of Americans over the age of 25 are high school grads.” Malkin failed to correctly quote the Census Report — Percent of People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed High School (Including Equivalency), Population 25 years and over (State level).

I did the math on this — and I am no statistics major, but it seems to me that if the data reported was from 2003, and most of the people surveyed in 2003 were 25 or older, that would mean that they graduated from High School on or before 1996 - given average age of 18 for high school graduates.

Just yesterday the L.A. Times published a story on high school drop out rates.

Statistics Versus Reality

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, in conjunction with UCLA, produced a controversial report last spring saying that official dropout statistics in California’s largest school districts were shockingly out of sync with reality. The researchers found that only 48% of the L.A. Unified students who started ninth grade in 1999 graduated four years later.

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1827

[sandnsea]

1. GED

That number has got to include people who got their GED after they dropped out, and you bet alot of people figure it out and go back and do that by the time they're 25. A GED is considered a high school diploma, well it is a diploma, it isn't just considered a diploma. Also, there's different ways to calculate graduation and/or drop out rates. One takes the number that drop out annually, the other takes a 4 year beginning-end graduation percentage. You can see that if 10% drop out annually, you'd have 40% of a freshman class not graduating. Something like that. So there's lots of ways to come up with that number, including the differences between low income and high income kids.

[kerrygoddess]

3. It does include GED

There's a lot of links on data that shows that census report and DOE reports are wrong. I could have spent more time on it but didn't have the time. The link to the LA Times article is good, it's a long article and then there's a link on it about Algebra from the day before.

[karynnj]

2. Thanks, KG

This clears it up. It's too bad he misspoke on that one sentence - otherwise it was a picture perfect interview right down to the laugh at the end. Do you think it was just that he found her nice to have you here absurd after she acted like she hated him for the entire interview? I guess the mistake just means he's human. (After all he only gave 3 major Alito speeches in the last week, went to Europe, and gave a nice explanation of the problem of the Average Minimum Tax today. Maybe it was caused by having to listen to Bush and to shake his hand :) )

When I replayed it, it seemed he was speaking a bit faster than normal with no pauses (that you would have in normal conversation) that would let Couic jump in. It also seemed almost like the debates where he would quickly address her question, then surge into the topic he wanted to speak about. I can't imagine the focus it would take to do that, while keeping his tone of voice calm and returning none of her anger.

I hope the correction will end this. That LA study is shocking. Years ago, there was a NYT story that showed that Huston, Texas, while former Education Secretary, Paige, was Superintendent claimed almost no drop outs, but when you looked at the average number of freshmen over several years it was more than 2 times as high the average graduating seniors. The problems there went even futher with some principals supposedly asking kids who were unlikely to pass the test to drop out, leading to higher scores for the school.

[kerrygoddess]

4. LOL! The LA Times study is not shocking to me

My daughter's school has a higher drop out rate than Birmingham - we're about 10 - 15 miles from that school. It's really bad here, even if the schools offer some good programs.

[globalvillage]

5. My brother taught in LA

He said some of the kids in his class had never seen the ocean.
He took them on a field trip so they could see it. Some for the first time.

So sad.

[ProSense]

6. More

The data are particularly bleak for racial minorities and poor children. Only about one-half of African-American and Latino youths graduate from high school, with some states showing that only about a third of these children graduate. Graduation rates are also markedly lower for low-income children and for boys.

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=29833

Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in the South
Johanna Wald and Daniel Losen. May 17, 2005

The South is a critical region to examine because it has a very large and rapidly growing population and has always been home to a majority of African Americans. In addition, several southern states are now in the epicenter of a huge Latino migration. The region also has a history of racial inequality including unlawful school segregation. As pointed out in this report, two independent studies show a high correlation between racially and socio-economically segregated schools and very low graduation rates. Not surprisingly, the research shows that poor, racially isolated Whites have low graduation rates that are nearly identical to poor, racially isolated Blacks. Nationally, few predominantly White schools have concentrated poverty, but there are significant numbers of these in parts of the rural South.

http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/dropouts/dropouts_south05.php

Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in California
Dan Losen and Johanna Wald. March 24, 2005

Every year, across the country, a dangerously high percentage of students—disproportionately poor and minority—disappear from the educational pipeline before graduating from high school. Nationally, only about 68% of all students who enter 9th grade will graduate “on time” with regular diplomas in 12th grade. While the graduation rate for white students is 75%, only approximately half of Black, Latino, and Native American students earn regular diplomas alongside their classmates.

http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/dropouts/dropouts05.php

[TayTay]

7. I wonder if Sen. Kerry did this on purpose.

To provoke a debate based on the new way that graduations rates are being calculated. That 53% rate was very jarring and this is the second time he has used that figure in the last week. This is a smart guy, he vets what he says before he says it. I wonder.......

[ProSense]

9. I wondered about that

because the numbers that are buried are pretty bad. Seems that some states grad rate for all student are off the national average by double digits. Also, some studies place the national average much lower than being reported. And most organizations have nothing good to say about Bush's NCLB.

[karynnj]

10. It was incredibly jarring - enough that it does trigger

a thought of "is that right". I would have been startled by the real rate. The new technique seems to make far more sense. I don't think he would intentionally use a wrong number. I do think he would use a number using the new methodology though and even that number is pretty jarring.

[kerrygoddess]

11. well...

I don't think they are too worried about what is being said. It's seems to a fairly small outcry from the right wingnutia and off course no one on the left has said a word...

See Memorandum - http://www.memeorandum.com/

[ProSense]

8. There's a lot of good links

at Kerry's site.

http://kerry.senate.gov/text/congress/education.html

This is an excellent document:

http://www.dropoutprevention.org/stats/SchlDrpoutFacts05.pdf