Education Next – Paul E. Peterson
“When schools—and potentially teachers—are held accountable, they have an incentive to report more positive results on student performance than actually takes place. School administrators have been doing that for years, most notably by reporting student dropouts only if they take place during the school year, despite the fact that most students disappear from the schoolhouse between one school year and the next. For decades we were told that 90 percent of the students were graduating from high school when the actual number was closer to 70 percent.”(more)