Panel Urges New System for H.S. Data

Graduation, Dropout Rates Focus of Policy Concern

The best way to get a handle on slippery dropout and graduation rates across the nation, a federal task force has concluded, is for states and federal statisticians to work together in devising data-collection systems that can track individual students throughout their high school years.

That call is the central recommendation of a long-awaited report released last week by the Task Force on Graduation, Completion, and Dropout Indicators. Made up of 10 academics and government statisticians, the panel was formed in the fall of 2003 to advise the U.S. Department of Education’s chief statistical agency on ways to improve its reporting on schools’ progress in helping students earn high school diplomas.

But federal officials and independent experts said last week that the task force is placing a tall order on states and the National Center for Education Statistics. Though student-level longitudinal tracking systems may be considered a gold standard for measuring education progress, fewer than a dozen states have such systems in place, experts said. Establishing more of them, they added, could take years...