“For the fourth year in a row, Arizona ranks last among the states for its percentage of teens, ages 16 to 19, who have dropped out of school.”
Source: The Arizona Republic
The survey said 12 percent of Arizona kids do not graduate but State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne says is closer to 6 percent. How could there be this large of a gap? Don’t they take attendance at school any more?
The problem, as we’ve learned here at the Journal in reporting on this issue over the years, is that there are many different ways of calculating the “dropout rate,” with strengths and weaknesses. Among the things that are difficult to cope with in measuring: kids who transfer to different schools (both within and outside a given district), kids who finish in five years instead of four, kids who get GEDs, kids who stop and then restart. Different people prefer different measures for reasons both legitimate and illegitimate. But the bottom line is that making useful comparisons among different jurisdictions is nearly impossible.