District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

Recommended Graduation Rate Standard for 2009 AYP Determinations

At our February 2009 meeting, I recommended that the Board establish the following graduation rate standard for the 2009 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) determinations to be applied in the aggregate and to all student subgroups meeting the minimum group size requirements:

• a four-year graduation rate of 65 percent for the 2008 cohort, or
• a two percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate from the 2007 cohort to the 2008 cohort.

Based on the Board's discussion at our February meeting, I asked our staff to examine options for including a five-year graduation rate as a component of the 2009 AYP determinations. As a result, I am submitting an amended proposal for your consideration:

• a four-year graduation rate of 65 percent applied to the 2008 graduation cohort, or
• a five-year graduation rate of 70 percent applied to the 2007 graduation cohort, or
• a two percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate from the 2007 cohort to 2008 cohort.

The U.S Department of Education (USED) did not approve our request to include a five-year graduation rate component in the 2008 AYP determinations and indicated that they expected Massachusetts to provide a "more challenging" graduation rate standard in future years. Given the nature of the calculation, I believe a five percentage point increase in both the four and five-year rates meets this standard. We will again request that the USED recognize the importance of the five-year graduation rate in addition to the strict four-year rate and approve all three elements of our proposed standard.

I have attached a display of potential AYP impact data    for your review at the end of this memorandum. Based on 2008 AYP data, my original recommendation would have resulted in three additional schools not making AYP and factoring in a five-year graduation rate component would have reduced that number to one school. Please note that these impact data are estimates. Actual 2009 AYP results will be dependent on 2009 MCAS participation and performance data.

As a reminder, I have included some of the factors that went into making my original recommendation.

• We apply the graduation rate standard to each student subgroup, in order to support our efforts to hold districts and schools accountable for all of the children in their care. While the statewide average graduation rate for students in the aggregate was just over 81% in 2008, average rates for our student subgroups ranged from a high of 87% for White and Asian students, to 68% for African-American/Black students, 65% for low-income students, 64% for special education students, 58% for Hispanic students, and 56% percent for students with limited English proficiency. Sixty-five percent is a realistic short-term target for our lowest performing schools.
• By including an option for demonstrating improvement, a school or district with a student subgroup rate below the 65 percent standard has a realistic opportunity to meet its AYP goal for the current year. I am very concerned by the low graduation rates for certain student subgroups, and believe it is essential that we credit, within our school accountability system, schools' efforts to improve their ability to engage students through graduation.
• Because the graduation rate calculation takes into account students who drop out over a four-year period, even the most effective remedial efforts will take some time to be fully reflected in the rate.
• Beginning next year with the class of 2009 cohort, we plan to amend our graduation rate cohort definition to include students who were enrolled in grade 8 in a district but who did not subsequently enroll in grade 9 or for whom there is no verifiable evidence that the student transferred to a private school or out-of-state school. This change in cohort definition will identify these students as non-graduates, and we anticipate a one-time downward impact on the four- and five-year graduation rates next year as a consequence of this reporting change.

In February, I sent you copies of our recently released graduation rate report, which includes data on both the four-year rate for the 2008 cohort and the five-year rate for the 2007 cohort. This report is also available on our website at http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/reports/gradrates/

If you have any questions or need further information, please contact Matthew Pakos, the Department's Director of School Improvement Grant Programs, at 781-338-3507; Robert Curtin, our Director of Data Analysis and Reporting, at 781-338-3582; or me.