History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Some Education Department spin
- 12-01-2010
-
Blog by Valerie Strauss/Washington Post
It didn’t take long for the U.S. Education Department to try to link its school turnaround policy to the new report that says that the number of high school “dropout factories” has declined in the last decade. On the same day that the report “Building a Grad Nation" was released, the department issued a press release saying: “As the recently released "Building a Grad Nation" report provides a renewed call to action to address high school graduation rates, the U.S. Department of Education announced today that of the more than 700 schools receiving School Improvement Grants (SIG) to implement one of the four turnaround models this year, 48 percent are high schools. "In the past, low-performing high schools have been almost totally ignored in most districts’ school turnaround efforts," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "Yet nearly half of the 730 schools implementing one of the four models this year are high schools." That sounds like an attempt to link the policy to the report, which said that the number of U.S. “dropout factory” high schools declined from 2002 through 2008, though close to 40 percent of minority students continue to fail to graduate with their class. (more…)
Send this
Print this
