Why do Jacksonville's community leaders feel the need to misinform the public about graduation rates?

Why do Jacksonville's community leaders feel the need to misinform the
public about graduation rates?

I understand why the district does it. The school board is trying to
protect their niche and Pratt-Dannals his six figure salary. I do
however wonder why the United Way, Times Union, the Jacksonville
Public Education fund and the president of Florida State College are
trying to misinform the public about the district's graduation rates
something they have all done in recent letters or editorials in the
Times Union. It is like there is a concentrated ffort to convince the
public the emperor, obvioulsy naked, has new clothes.

Here is the reality of the situation.

Six years ago Duval County much to the chagrin of many of its teachers
increased its graduation requirements. Algebra II no longer became a
subject that just the nerdy kid took but now every kid had too and the
same went for chemistry or physics as well.

(I don’t mean to digress but how many of you use advanced algebra in
your everyday life?)

Do you know what happened as a result? Our graduation rate went down.
The year before the change our rate was 56.3 and the year after it was
51.4 though it has steadily climbed since then.

When Pratt Dannals became superintendent five years ago, the
graduation rate was 51.5% and this last year it was 63.3% which is a
significant increase but now that we know the higher grad
requirements, something the enitites above have also cellebrated, led
to the superintendent's low starting point, let’s look beyond the
numbers.

Duval County for the last few years has relied heavily on grade
recovery to graduate many of its kids. Grade recovery used to be for
kids that tried hard and just didn’t get it or for kids who missed a
lot of days for a legitimate and documented reason. Sadly it changed
under Pratt-Dannals and now any kid, can take it, any time, under any
circumstance. Now kids that made no effort, never came or spent the
majority of their time disrupting class are eligible and using it to
make up classes. Rigor, accountability, heck even supervision have all
been compromised as a result.

The Times Union did an article a while back which said 15,000 kids had
used GR to make up classes. Say just half the kids who took advantage
of it didn’t deserve too (I think it is closer to ninety percent) well
that could explain as much as a six percent increase in our graduation
rate. Unfortunately there is no way to adequately tell and I believe
the district likes it that way.

But it is worse than that friends. Teachers are told all the time with
air quotes that they can only fail a certain amount of kids, or if
they fail to many their jobs will be in jeopardy. Many people think
rigor in our schools has been seriously compromised and kids that give
just a minimal effort are passed through. How much of a role did the
district’s unofficial gentlemen’s C policy affect graduation rates? I
would guess more so than even grade recovery did.

So what’s our legitimate prepared to be successful in life or college,
graduation rate. I don’t know but I do know that businesses report
having a hard time finding good applicants and 70% of our grads have
to take remedial classes at Florida State College. I don’t know but I
know it is significantly less than the grossly inflated graduation
rate we have now. The Times Union, the district, the United Way,the
JPEF and Florida State College at Jacksonville should know that too
but they instead look the other way. Numbers not kids being what is
important to them.

Don’t we need honesty in this discussion if we want to have meaningful
improvement?

Graduation rates by year:

2011- 63.3%
2010- 58.3%
2009- 55.8%
2008- 53.5%
2007- 51.5%
2006- 51.4%
2005- 56.3%
2004- 57.2%
2003- 52.2%

Finally say I am just all wrong, I have just lost it or I am
disgruntled or whatever, well friends only 54% of our African America
kids are graduating and the overall State average is 70%. We should be
appalled with where we find ourselves even with the so called
improvement.