Correction of errors raises Cape Girardeau School District's graduation rate

Graduation rates in the Cape Girardeau School District are considerably higher than originally reported, after some extensive number crunching by district staff found several errors in the state report.

But any glitches in information rest on data collection at the district level, a state education official said.

The updated figures show a 2010 graduation rate of 78.4 percent, compared to 73 percent noted in the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Annual Performance Report. The corrected data show 82 dropouts in the defined cohort or group, compared to 110 the previous year.

Superintendent Jim Welker said as officials began looking at the rates it became apparent there were excessively high levels of dropouts. The district's technology department spent days going through the list of dropouts back to 2006-2007, Welker said, and as a result found numerous corrections that needed to be made in the data.

Part of the problem, he said, is in the state's complicated system of reporting dropouts. A student can be counted as a dropout more than once, even if he goes on to graduate. Some students can be lost in the tracking system, too, if they drop out but go on to graduate in another school district, although DESE's statewide program does reflect mobility.

"We still have a lot of work to do, but we're not nearly as bad as what we had thought originally," Welker said of the graduate rate. "We feel like we have to have accurate data to know where we're starting from."

But any mistakes in the data would have to come from the district, said Leigh Ann Grant-Engle, DESE's assistant commissioner for office of data system management.

"We do not make changes to student-level data," she said. All of the information on graduates and dropouts is compiled by public school systems, and that information can be changed accordingly at the school level upon review, Grant-Engle said.

The department did confirm the updated data but will not amend the information in the annual reports until fall.

The Cape Girardeau School District failed to meet the state graduation rate requirement in the Annual Performance Report. The revised rate won't change that, but it does bring the district closer to a graduation rate goal of 90 percent.

"I think we have a much better chance of getting to that point," Welker said. "If we improve each year, hopefully we'll be able to meet that."

The review found incorrect data over the past four years. In 2009, the district's graduation rate was 72.3 percent; the updated information shows the rate was 78.2 percent.

The district's 2010 dropout rate improved from the original 5.9 percent to 4.8 percent. The dropout rate was 5.5 percent in 2009 and 9.2 percent in 2008, according to statistics from DESE. The highest recorded rate was 12.5 percent in 1992.

Grant-Engle said the education department has not changed its cohort system, which can double- or triple-count dropouts. It is, however, moving to the national tracking system, which will follow the freshman class over time to track how many graduate in four years.

mkittle@semissourian.com

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1000 S. Silver Springs Road, Cape Girardeau MO