There's been a lot of back and forth about the city's bragging rights to recent high school graduation rates. Sure they're on the rise, but when fewer than 23 percent of graduates are "college ready," does that diploma even mean anything? Now, an audit (below) finds that the city may have been fudging the numbers on high school dropouts. Would it be better to let them graduate?
State Controller DiNapoli conducted the audit after it was alleged that the city was counting some dropouts as "discharges"—students who left for other districts or private schools. DiNapoli said in a statement, "(The education department) should be doing its homework and making sure the right papers are turned in to back up the reasons why students are leaving school." The audit found that for the 2004 through 2008 school years the dropout rate could have been as high as 16.5 percent, over three points higher than the number reported by the Department of Education. And in a random sample of 500 "discharged students," 74 didn't have the proper documentation, and should have been classified as dropouts.
However, city officials say getting all that paperwork is really complicated. Spokesman Matt Mittenthal told the Daily News, "In a large urban district like NYC, students and their families leave the City or the United States without notice, a forwarding address, a telephone number, or information about the student's future plans outside of New York City." Dropout or discharge, the students who do make it through the system are incredibly unprepared, so can the state start focusing on that instead of auditing students who aren't here?
