Today, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) shed some light on a study released by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) last week. While the SREB report indicates that Louisiana’s high school graduation rate fell from 64 percent in 2002 to 60 percent in 2006, LDOE officials say the methodology used in the SREB calculation does not take into account the dramatic population shifts that occurred in the 2005-2006 school year as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Based on Louisiana’s method of calculating graduation rates, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Education and adopted by the National Governors Association, Louisiana’s graduation rate is actually improving.

“Either way, we need to improve our capacity to support students so that they graduate from high school prepared to thrive in their college and career pursuits,” State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek said. “Our data reveals that the situation isn’t as bleak as the SREB report may lead one to conclude on the surface. But even the gains we are making based on our measurements – approximately six tenths of a percent each year – aren’t enough. And the Department is in the midst of an intensified effort to provide districts and schools with interventions and support in an attempt to effectively increase graduation rates. Louisiana has set an ambitious goal to raise our graduation rate to 80 percent by 2014, and we intend to meet that objective.”

As the SREB study points out, there are several methods used by state and national groups to measure graduation rates. The SREB study uses the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), while Louisiana uses the Adjusted Cohort Rate (ACR). While both of these methods measure the percentage of freshmen who graduated from high school in four years, there are some key differences – and in the case of Louisiana, these differences largely affect trend data.

Specifically, the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate does not account for students who transfer out of state. That difference results in the statistically significant difference between LDOE’s Adjusted Cohort Rate of 64.8% in 2006, compared to the SREB’s Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate of 60% for the same year. In its report released last week, Gaining Ground on High School Graduation Rates in SREB States: Milestones and Guideposts, SREB acknowledges that “for states with strong data systems, a cohort based rate can take into account any students who transferred into high school or left for any reason.”

Dr. George Noell, Executive Director of Strategic Research at the LDOE, notes that for states with static populations, the Adjusted Cohort Rate and the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate will be virtually the same. “However, in states such as California or Florida, that have large influxes of students…. or states such as Louisiana and Mississippi that experienced dramatic shifts in their population after the 2005 hurricanes, you will see a large difference in the two rates,” Noell explained.

A side by side examination of SREB graduation rates and LDOE graduation rates since 2001 reveals statistically insignificant differences in the Adjusted Cohort Rate and the Average Freshman Graduation Rate for Louisiana. However, for 2006, there is a sharp shift in the data. For 2006, the difference is 5% in Louisiana – and 23% in Mississippi.

Louisiana’s graduation rate based on the Adjusted Cohort Rate is as follows:

For more information on the SREB report, please link to SREB.org.