Education's hidden scandal

Paul E. Peterson in the Charlotte Observer.

... dropout rates have actually increased since 1990, rising to 30 percent of all 17-year-olds.

Among blacks the dropout rate is running somewhere between 50 and 60 percent, a sad fact that remains one of the best-kept secrets in American education. Because few people know the facts, in a recently issued book Michael Dyson scolds Bill Cosby for (accurately) lamenting the fact that only about half of blacks graduate from high school. Dyson "corrected" him, saying the dropout rate is only 17 percent, an inaccuracy that earned Dyson warm praise from a New York Times book reviewer.

The reviewer's error only shows how successful the public education cartel has been in misleading the public. To hide actual dropout rates, most school districts report as dropouts only those who entered the year as seniors but did not remain in school until the end of that year. All other dropouts over the preceding three years -- and all the summers in between, when most dropping out actually occurs -- are statistically ignored.