Florida graduation rates are soaring — but there's a catch

Off-track for graduation after failing a world history course, Kareem Bennett was on his way to being a statistic.

Or at least he night have been if school officials at Wesley Chapel High School in Florida hadn’t recently implemented a student tracking system. The system alerted leaders to get Bennett into a credit recovery program right away. And that has him back on the path to an on-time diploma, Jeffrey S. Solocheck reports in The St. Petersburg Times.

The result of such efforts: graduation rates in the Pasco School District skyrocketed from 67.8 percent last year to 85.5 percent this year, according to district calculations.

An 18 percent rise in graduation rates doesn’t just happen. What we're seeing in Pasco County — and all across the Sunshine State — is the result of hard work, pedagogical innovation and a focus on individual students. Pasco County schools are creating a winning combination and we at nodropout.org wish the best.

But now for the reality check: While Pasco’s Hudson High saw an incredible 15 percent increase in its graduation rate, it's still failing to graduate three our of every 20 of its students on time.

Furthermore, the school's self-calculated 85 percent graduation rate excludes students who left school for adult education programs — even though many of those students won't end up receiving a high school diploma or even the far-less-valuable GED from those programs.

Calculated using the federal government's formula (which all Florida schools will adopt next year) the graduation rate is closer to 67 percent. For more on this, we commend to you another recent Times article, by reporter Ron Matus, which demonstrates the differences between local calculations and expected federal numbers. 

In other words, let's not pretend that we've got the dropout epidemic figured out. Not for a moment.

There's still a long, long way to go.