Graduation rate sees dropouts as no-count.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler

North Carolina public schools have been a fixture on national honor rolls for 10 years. Test scores have improved, with educators crediting a school accountability program that became a model for the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. A shining example of the state's success was a 2002 high-school graduation rate of 92.5%--second only to South Dakota.

Or was it? A Washington, D.C.-based education think tank says the figure isn't what it seems. "When you say high-school graduation rate, everyone understands what that ought to mean--what percentage of students that start high school graduate," says Kevin Carey, senior policy analyst for the Education Trust.

That's not what North Carolina's rate means, Carey says. Instead, the state looks at a group of graduates to determine how many were freshmen four years earlier. That measures how many graduated in four years, but it doesn't account for dropouts. A more accurate measure, he says, is to compare how many students entered the ninth grade in 1998 with how many graduated in 2002. Under that measure, North Carolina's rate was 63%, fifth-worst among states.

Lou Fabrizio, accountability chief for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, says the state couldn't retroactively chart...