The High Rate of Graduation In Texas Could Be Misleading

Apparently Texas has the second highest graduation rate in the country as this report from NPR explains, however, there's a fairly large number of "data errors".However, the report is not exactly accurate according to another report from NPR. The report shows that in the fall of 2009,Texas counted 360,373 ninth graders, and over the next four years, 289,298 received diplomas. That should be around an 80 percent graduation rate.

But Texas actually reports an 88 percent grad rate! Apparently in Texas there's a so-called "leaver code" for every possible explanation from homeschooling, transferring to a private school or GED program or moving out of the state or country.

The report goes on to say that over a 4-year span more than 50,000 students used a "leaver code".  Another 1,000 or so simply went missing or were labeled as "data errors". In both cases they were not counted as dropouts.

So, what's the big deal?  It's only 8 percent right?  Well, in most businesses that's a huge margin of error and it's rather disturbing knowing that thousands of students are actually "disappearing" from the system.  What ever happened to "no child left behind"?