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Article: Graduation rate is deceptive.(Editorial)
- Article from:
- The Boston Herald
- Article date:
- January 18, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Boston Herald. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1989, President Bush and the 50 governors established as their second educational goal for the year 2000 that the high school graduation rate should rise to 90 percent. Nothing more clearly exposes the intellectual confusion of Goals 2000. With the graduation rate already in the 80s, raising it to 90 presented no particular challenge: by most estimates it is currently 86 percent.
But making an increased graduation rate an end in itself makes it far more difficult to establish reasonable standards for graduation. These are desperately needed. For as state after state begins serious testing of its students, it is becoming clear that many thousands of students ...