You have probably heard the quotation:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln, (attributed) 16th president of US (1809 - 1865).

The following article has to do with how we have been fooling ourselves in terms of measurements of high school graduation rates.

CBS/AP (7/27/2011). States brace for grad-rate dips as formula changes. CBS News. Retrieved 8/1/2011 from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/27/backtoschool/main20084393.shtml.

Quoting from the article:

States are bracing for plummeting high school graduation rates as districts nationwide dump flawed measurement formulas that often undercounted dropouts and produced inflated results.

Education wonks long have suspected the statistics used by some  people  to determine how their neighborhood high school is faring -- or even where to buy a house -- can be figured using various formulas that produce wildly different results.

Now, many states are facing a sobering reset: Some could see numbers fall by as many as 20 percentage points.

Liz Utrup, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Education Department, said graduation rate numbers will soon appear to decrease "across the board" as states move to a uniform calculation that requires them to track each student individually, giving a more accurate count of how many actually finish high school.

…

States that converted to the new formula already have seen drops ranging from modest to massive. Michigan had a nearly 10 percentage point fall when it made the switch in 2007. About half of states are not yet using the new calculation.

Of course, this situation still begs the question of widely varying requirements for a high school degree, including the varying standards of content and performance in courses throughout the country.

It also begs the question as to what constitutes a good quality education. For example, how about requiring oral and written fluency in two languages? Would this be a reasonable requirement for high school graduation?

How about a demonstrated ability to learn on one’s own—meaning learning to learn from books, the Web, by talking to people, and so on?

Our current measures of success in education also miss the boat in terms of long-term retention. When people take a course, unless they routinely make use of the content they forget most of the course content in a relatively short period of time. Long-term retention varies considerably with the content being learned and the methods of teaching. One way to combat this is through helping students to develop life-long habits of mind. A habit of mind of routinely seeking and acquiring new knowledge and skills can serve a person throughout their life.

Here is a good self-assessment question. At the end of each day ask yourself the two questions: "What did I learn today? " "Am I satisfied with the amount and quality of this learning?" 

WE are all capable of gaining increased knowledge and skill in becoming a self-sufficient life-long learner. Surely our required schooling should lay a solid foundation for this.