Measuring high school graduation rates a tricky exercise

The official 2006 graduation rate for Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools is 92%. But that number and the formula by which it was calculated are falling out of use in public education. For years, public educators in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC, have measured graduation rates based on the number of students known to have dropped out, and many dropouts are never counted. Now, educators are taking a closer look at attrition, the winnowing-down of a high school population over time, as the basis for a new, more accurate—and less flattering—way of calculating the graduation rate. Read more at The Washington Post website.