Dive Brief:

• President Barack Obama discussed the steady growth in graduation rates at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, DC, Monday as an example of his administration’s success.
• The Huffington Post reports the graduation rate has gone from 79% in 2010-11, when state-by-state comparisons were first made possible with consistent data collection, to 83.2% during the 2014-15 school year.
• While achievement gaps persist, American Indian/Alaska Native, Latino, black and English language learner students have all made greater gains than white and Asian students, who bring up the national average with 87.6% and 90.2% graduation rates in 2014-15, respectively.

Dive Insight:

Los Angeles Unified School District is among those touting record-high graduation rates last year, and it is also among those criticized for its methods of achieving that success. Officials have been accused of lowering standards in credit recovery programs to help students qualify for graduation.  Last year, NPR uncovered questionable practices contributing to the rising graduation rates at the national level, as well. The NPR investigation found some districts mislabel students or find other ways to remove them from the overall graduation rate.

Like any accountability metric, too much focus on one issue creates disincentives to game the numbers. Controlling certain factors to artificially inflate graduation rates is not unlike the cheating scandals that have rocked some districts in the age of high-stakes standardized tests. Passing tests they aren't prepared for or classes they didn’t learn from doesn’t help students, though. Strong leaders can help schools weather the storm of slowly growing graduation rates if it means better student outcomes overall.