Dive Brief:

• Tennessee education officials announced earlier this month that one-third of the state’s 2015 graduates received diplomas without actually meeting the state’s requirements, but they have since realized they classified students who took math or English classes at community colleges as not having taken them at all.
• Chalkbeat reports individual districts have reviewed their own graduation data and come to strikingly different conclusions from the state audit, prompting state officials to reanalyze and ultimately find 22%, rather than 33%, of students graduated without meeting the proper requirements.
• Among those 22%, Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said students were allowed to substitute courses for requirements that they shouldn’t have been able to and some received waivers they shouldn’t have been eligible for.

Dive Insight:

Tennessee’s original data came from an investigation into why so many graduates in the state struggle in college. Its revelation that a third of students didn’t actually qualify for their diplomas was a shock. Still the fact that it looks like slightly more than one-fifth of students still fit that category is troubling and should be addressed.

The whole correction speaks to the problem of getting good data in education. In the higher education sphere, this has been a particular concern for tracking graduation rates accurately. Students who start at one institution and transfer are no longer tracked at that school, meaning if they ultimately get a degree, they aren’t counted as doing so in the records of the original institution. This artificially deflates outcomes at community colleges, for example.