I always get tickled at the number of North Carolina politicians and educrats who celebrate our recent gains on state and national tests given in elementary and middle school. First, you can’t really tell how big these gains are given how much North Carolina’s test-taking population has changed over the years being studied. Second, you can’t tell how good the trend is for state-only tests because, well, they are state-only ? there’s no independent way of verifying whether the tests are maintaining a consistent standard of rigor.
But another problem, perhaps a more fundamental one, is simply that most of these measurements are focused on lower grades. As good as it may be for North Carolina 4th-graders to reach the national average in reading and math, 4th-graders are not the final product of the K-12 educational process. Well-educated high-school graduates are, or should be, the goal.
That’s why this piece of news is so bad. North Carolina remains close to the bottom in the graduation rate ? the share of students who make it through high school and get a diploma.
