Education policy

The utterly depressing graduation rate numbers were released yesterday for cities across the nation. Denver was one of the worst, with DPS' graduation rate at an abysmal 47%. The suburbs of Denver graduate over 80%.

The number is low but not it's not shocking to anyone who has spent time on this issue. DPS Superintendent Michael Bennett is a very smart, if not brilliant, man who should be commended for trying to think outside of the old paradigms. Still, it doesn't appear that Denver is making any improvement - 2006 and 2007 reports show very similar numbers.

With my limited experience in education policy there appears to be few truths; correlations are relatively easy to spot but causations are very difficult to determine and it's nearly impossible to control for all of the variables which impact a child's education. All of which makes successes at one district or school very difficult to replicate at another.

I don't have much to say about the graduation rates per se that isn't obvious to anyone who reads them - they are, again, depressingly awful and the implications for the individual kids and society as a whole are severe. What I did find interesting though was a post at my favorite left-leaning Israeli blog,

Poor kids get worse educations and graduate from high school at lower rates than rich kids. That’s bad. What could be worse? The Bank of Israel’s annual report (not yet available on line, but here’s a report in today’s Ha’aretz) says that the education gap has remained virtually the same since 1992. We’ve made no progress at all.

In terms of demography Israel is a vastly different place from the United States and yet they face the same basic issues of poor kids getting left far, far behind and the inability to make any serious progress on the issue. It's not exactly encouraging news but I think it is significant that a country so different from ours faces very similar issues in their education system.