Contact: Marsha Richards, Communications Director
(360) 956-3482

A-Plus Commission drops the ball on dropouts

By Bob Williams, President
For years, legislators have been trying unsuccessfully to get accurate high school graduation rates. That’s why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently contracted with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation to obtain accurate statistics.

The Gates Foundation report noted that only 67 percent of the 9th grade students who enter our state’s public schools (excluding those who transfer out of state or into a private school) graduate from high school. In reviewing the data, our state’s A-Plus Commission believes the rate is actually 70.1 percent.

This startling information caused the Commission to take action, and they developed a 12-year plan to raise the graduation rate to 85 percent.

But the Commission’s plan is not aggressive or effectively structured. Consider:

• If a school district has a graduation rate of 73 percent or more, it is not required to take any steps to improve its graduation rate until 2013, when it must jump to 85 percent.
  
  
• If a school district has a less-than 73 percent graduation rate, it must improve its rate by one percent per year, and then hit the 85 percent bar by 2013. If it fails to meet this requirement, it is subject to the remedies listed in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but faces no state penalties.

What happens at the state level if a district fails to meet the 85 percent goal? Nothing.

It will require 12 years to implement this new “accountability” measure, which has no teeth and only gets us to an 85 percent graduation rate. That’s another generation. Is this the best we can do?

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org