Re: education: EPI vs. the Manhattan Institute

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

Back in the early 1980s I did school enrolment calculations and
projections for a living. My job title was "facilities assistant" at
the Vancouver School Board. The first thing to note about enrolments is
that it has more to do with the budget than anything else. X students
bring Y dollars. Horses have been known to appear on payrolls. The
second thing to note is that the methodology for computing enrolments
is crude, dead-dog crude. We're talking something thought up by some
administrator in the 1940s maybe and never revisited. The third thing
to remember is that discrepencies look bad. Therefore when actual
numbers significantly fail to resemble previously published
projections, there may be a little massaging of data to keep things
quiet.

I have only sympathy for anyone trying to get to the bottom of
aggregated national enrolment statistics. Believe me, it ain't the BLS.

The Sandwichman

On 5/24/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 5/23/06, michael perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> *Max & others, what do you think?
>
>
> Dropout Data Raise Questions on 2 Fronts*
> One Side Says Problem Isn't as Dire as Thought, but Others Doubt Research
>
> By Jay Mathews
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, May 23, 2006; A08
<snip>
> The major event has been the publication of a book by Mishel and
> Economic Policy Institute economist Joydeep Roy, "Rethinking High School
> Graduation Rates and Trends."

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the main insight of the book
must be correct:

<blockquote>We find that the school-based enrollment/diploma data show
an inaccurately low graduation rate, especially when diplomas are
compared to ninth grade enrollment. This is because ninth-grade
enrollment includes many students who have been retained as well as
those entering ninth grade. This ninth-grade 'bulge' (counting those
retained as well as those entering) has grown substantially over the
last 10 and 20 years, leading to a wrong conclusion that graduation
rates have fallen. School enrollment/ diploma data, corrected for the
bulge, show a steady graduation rate.

The results for minorities are especially biased since there are 23%
more minorities in ninth grade than eighth grade. Simply comparing
diplomas to the relevant eighth rather than ninth-grade class yields
graduation rates for blacks of 61% and Hispanics of 64.5% rather than
the 50% graduation rate frequently cited from the school-based
enrollment/
diploma data. Even with a correction for the ninth-grade bulge, these
data yield graduation rates that are low relative to other, better
data.</blockquote>

Surely, the effect of grade retention on graduation stats has to be
taken into account, and methods that take that into account would have
to be better than those that don't, other things being equal.

In addition to making high school completion rates look more dismal
than reality, grade retention must also actually increase dropouts and
force them to obtain GEDs instead.  It is said that grade retention
policy has become more widespread over the last 25 years: "Despite a
century of research that fails to support the efficacy of grade
retention, the use of grade retention has increased over the past 25
years.  It is estimated that as many as 15% of American students are
held back each year, and 30% - 50% of students in the US are retained
at least once before ninth grade" (at
< http://www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_graderetent.html>).
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org >
<http://monthlyreview.org/>

-- 
Sandwichman