Ed. Dept. Chided on Graduation Oversight

Inspector general says better enforcement of NCLB provision would boost accuracy of states’ data

The goal of ensuring the accuracy of states’ graduation data would be closer to reality if the Department of Education had been more forceful in implementing provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, the department’s office of inspector general says in a report released this month.

The department approved the graduation-rate formulas of all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, many of which didn’t require tracking the percentage of students who graduated within four years of entering high school, the IG’s office says in the report, and didn’t force the states to build the data systems needed to do so.

“If the department had been more assertive in requiring states to implement a longitudinal student-tracking system shortly after the enactment of NCLB, all states now could have four years of student data,” the report says. “Instead, less than a quarter of the states are using a system that complies with the...