According to the SREB, the percentage of high school students in Kentucky earning their degrees increased by 9 percent between 1996 and 2006. Only South Carolina (13.1 percent) and Tennessee (12.8 percent) showed higher gains among the SREB states during the decade.
While school districts throughout the nation have been sharply — and rightly— criticized for under-reporting their graduation rates, the SREB calculates graduation rates by comparing the number of high school graduates a state reports with the number of ninth graders it reported having four years earlier.
Typically, the difference between the number of high school freshmen reported with the number who graduate four years later is much higher than the dropout rates reported by individual school districts. Because the SREB uses a different method than the federal government does to calculate graduation rates, we think the SREB’s numbers are much more accurate than the federal government’s. That makes the improvement in graduation rates reported by the SREB even more encouraging.
Nevertheless, the SREB’s annual “Diplomas Count” study emphasizes that even with the improving numbers far too many students in the 16 states — and the nation as a whole for that matter — are failing to earn the most basic level of education needed for success in life.
“Diplomas Count” estimates that about 1.3 million students who should have been part of the class of 2009 nationwide did not graduate, including about 564,000 in SREB states. More than 100,000 students did not graduate in Texas and Florida, along with more than 64,000 in Georgia, 47,000 in North Carolina and nearly 34,000 in Virginia.
“It's encouraging news to see that states and public schools are helping more students graduate from high school,” SREB President Dave Spence said. “States need to continue to raise graduation rates — and should focus on ensuring that a high school diploma means students are ready to begin college or career training.”
Translation: Don’t just reward students with high school diplomas for spending the required amount of time in school. Make sure they learn the skills and receive the knowledge that will help them succeed as adults.
Individuals need more than just a high school degree to guarantee success in today’s world, but without a high school degree, it is almost a certainty that they will spend their lives in the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. That’s why it is so amazing to us that any young person today would drop out of school.
Editorials
Fewer dropouts — 06/13/09
More Kentucky young people ernng high school degrees
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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