High School Graduation Rate: a Statistical Shell Game

There are three kinds of lies:

lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Author unknown

Among the other meaningless statistics that seem to abound in school systems and other institutions where we attempt to apply statistical results to support some idea about improvement, is the state’s graduation rate. Large systems seem to like stuff like that because it tends to show gradual but solid improvement over the past several years, but the truth is the statistic means very little in terms of keeping kids in school. It is merely a feel good stat that allows everyone to believe they are doing a good job. They say, ‘Look, three more students graduated this year’ by percentage that may be true. But it’s not the statistic that has real meaning in terms of people.

No one would argue that keeping kids in school long enough to acquire a diploma is a good thing. I mean, if they were not in school where exactly would they be? At work? For some that may be true, and for me, although I can prove I graduated, the pull toward work was ever present and directly related to the fact that I wanted to be able to afford my car, my own clothes, and in general my own sordid way of life. I am certain the same kinds of temptations exist for students today.

But the graduation rate based on students who enter the ninth grade and manage to graduate in four years doesn’t have any real meaning. What does, in the case of Hopewell, a 2.4 percent rise in graduation rate really mean except that for this year a couple extra kids got a diploma?

One of the problems with these statistics is that they track students entering a school system in their freshman year. They do not track whether that student left the school and went to another school but still remains on the first school’s enrollment figures. They do not take into account the student who “transfers” into a new school and then doesn’t show up for any classes, effectively dropping out without even crossing the threshold. There are way too many variables for this statistic to have any real meaning. And besides, students are supposed to graduate.

Without picking on any school system, or any system that relies on statistics as a measure of success, this doesn’t really tell the story. The real story deals with those students who didn’t graduate. Those figures aren’t nearly so nice and they fall under the title dropouts.

Dropouts are those students who for one reason or another simply stop attending school. There are numerous reasons why a student may drop out, and certainly there are special cases where the student has little or no option. But most of them are rare.

So what provides a better view of what’s happening in our schools is really the dropout rate. The chart shows graduation rates and dropout numbers for the past three years.

	2015		2014		2013
School System	Grad Rate	Dropouts	Grad Rate	Dropouts	Grad Rate	Dropouts
Commonwealth	90.5	4876	89.9	5810	89.1	6501
Chesterfield	90.9	283	91.4	287	90.2	308
Colonial Heights	89.7	12	94.8	8*	91.1	8*
Dinwiddie	77.4	19	81.1	35	81.7	32
Hopewell	81.9	39	79.5	42	78.8	30
Petersburg	70.9	24	82.6	36	77.5	55
Prince George	85.1	44	87.7	42	83.2	56

Statistics taken from Virginia Department of Education.

* VDOE did not calculate the data in the form; the data was extracted from the statistical percentage.

The data was pulled from the Virginia Department of Education’s Graduation Completion spreadsheet. It is readily available on the Internet. It has a great amount of information, much of which is statistical. It also has some interesting information about other aspects of school that is not the “feel good” statistics like graduation rates.

And so we come to what the figures mean. If we look at the 2015 data set, we can see that 421 students dropped out of area high schools that year.  Chesterfield had a whopping 283 dropouts. But statistically that only amounts to 6 percent of the 4,713 enrolled in the 2015 class, or cohort, as the state calls them. And within the state, 4,876 dropped out of 93,000 students, or 5.6 percent of the enrollment. From this example, it’s easy to see how statistics can bend reality. Oh, we say, 6 percent isn’t so bad. But when we look at what that percentage represents, 283 people… well maybe that’s not so good.

So how did the rest of the Tri-City Area fare? Let’s take 2015 as our example year:

• Chesterfield 243 dropouts, or 6 percent of 4,713 students
• Colonial Heights 12 dropouts or 5.6 percent of 214 students
• Dinwiddie 19 dropouts, or 11.5 percent of 165 students
• Hopewell 39 dropouts, or 13.3 percent of 293 students
• Petersburg 24 dropouts, or 8.3 percent of 289 students
• Prince George 44 dropouts, or 9.2 percent of 478 students

So I guess it’s nice to look at ‘atta boy statistics and pat ourselves on the back for how good we are doing. But the more important piece of data is in where the school systems are failing. We can’t simply look at a percentage and think, ‘well that’s OK.’ The number of students who dropped out of school is more critical than looking at those who managed to earn their diploma on time as they are supposed to.