Graduation rates could be lower than reported

Re “Dropout miscount,” Opinion,

Dec. 11

Gregory Rodriguez’s column called the Civil Rights Project at Harvard’s report on graduation rates “bogus.” He relied upon the state’s dropout data to claim that the graduation rate of minority students in the Los Angeles Unified School District is much higher.

Dropout data are notoriously misleading because thousands of students leave school but are never accounted for or have their status confirmed.

Experts agree that data should ideally track and report what happens to individual students over time.

The state admits that its data system is unreliable, and it is trying to start a student-tracking system. But Los Angeles already has a tracking system, which places the Latino graduation rate at 41%.

Although Rodriguez claims that out-migration makes dropout rates in the city appear artificially high, he provides no evidence.

In fact, the state Department of Education’s data show the opposite: that L.A. Unified enrollment increased by almost 15% over a decade.

This substantial in-migration suggests that graduation rates could be even lower than reported.

CHRISTOPHER B. SWANSON

Director

Research Center

Editorial Projects in Education

Bethesda, Md.

GARY ORFIELD

Director

The Civil Rights Project

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.