I didn't graduate high school, go to college... or get any special vocational training. I did how ever have an unhealthy fancination with computers at a very early age. That has paid off for me. :)
In my home town, a good superintendent left for a bigger district with $50K more salary, and was replaced with an insecure incompetent. Test scores started dropping, but by relaxing requirements for minor details like homework and discipline (bad behavior including assaulting a teacher was rewarded with candy, I am not making this up), the graduation rate started going up. Then an EF-5 tornado hit....
> The early 2000s were a dark time for state education statistics. States could report high school graduation rates any old way they pleased, and many did.
> It was only in the 2000s that most states acquired the technology to track individual students.
It's easy to miss the major progress that has been made--very recently--in the basics of measuring education.
>Despite all the action that's been taken recently toward this goal, we have to keep in mind the possibility that broader social forces are playing a larger role than policy initiatives in influencing the percentage who graduate.