Arne Debunkin’
A little over three years ago, I first encountered Arne Duncan when he spoke at the TFA 20 year alumni summit and described the miracle school Urban Prep. He implied that this school had a 100% graduation rate and a 100% college acceptance rate, which inspired me to investigate this clam leading to my very first school debunking. My research became a part of the ‘game changing’ (as Duncan likes to say) NY Times Op-Ed by Diane Ravitch, Waiting for a School Miracle.
Since that Op-Ed, politicians, including Duncan, have been a bit more careful with their miracle school claims. I suppose that Duncan felt it was safe to go back into the water when I saw himtweet, the other day:
I followed the link to the ed week blog, which began with the paragraph: “A high school graduation rate of 100 percent is quite a feat. At Stapleton High School in Denver, not only will all seniors earn a diploma this spring—each one has been admitted to a four-year college or university, according to a press release issued last week. And it’s not a fluke. This has been the case every year since 2008, for the school, where 40 percent of the racially and ethnically diverse student population comes from low-income families.”
So, let’s see, the opening sentence “A high school graduation rate of 100 percent is quite a feat.” Actually it depends on what they mean by a 100 percent graduation rate. If they mean a 100 percent ‘cohort’ rate, meaning that all the students who began as 9th graders three years earlier, eventually graduated, then yes, that would be something. But if they just mean that all Arne Debunkin’ | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:
