Colin Powell’s think tank just pegged graduation rates nationally at 80%. A new record.  That is 77% for males, 84% for females… This is marked for 2012… (our data ranges 2 years behind, even in this day of instant access…)

Data is broken down for states…..

Delaware, the best place to live in America, has an overall graduation rate of 78% that year… Broken down it goes like this:

77% American Indian  (65)

90% Asian (87)

71% Hispanic (71)

73% Black (67)

82% White (84)

71% Economically Disadvantaged (70)

65% Limited English (57)

56% Physical disabilities (59)

The national averages are included in the parenthesis… As can be readily seen, it is those damn white people that are bringing our state down!  Nice job, Blacks.  Way to push our team forward….

Now don’t let anyone tell you this success is from Common Core… These graduates in 2012, walked into first grade in 2000… Common Core wasn’t even a wet dream back then.  Common Core didn’t begin planning stages until 2010, and the very first pilot clases were rolled out in the 2012-2013 school year….  And even today, we still don’t know what we are doing…

If anything, this is somewhat of a vindication of No Child Left Behind….. This would be the first class that across its entire lifespan (more or less), was under the tutelage of teachers faced with penalties for not striving to succeed…  It is impossible to tell, since a myriad of other factors are in play, and there was no isolation or scientific process to weed out all other possibilities. Any one of those could be the big one, which was that due to the recession during this age group’s high school years,… staying in school was really the “only” practical option available….

Every parent who has had a child already undergo the Smart Balance Assessments or the PARCC, knows this graduation rate will plummet as soon as Common Core goes into effect… They see it in their child:  “Boy, I can’t wait to quit school and get away from all this ridiculous boring bullsh\t !”  Instructions for Common Core are harder to understand than Mandarin calligraphy…. At least one can learn Mandarin calligraphy. Common Core is a fluctuating standard that can be shifted either up or down upon a whim… depending on whether the power that be, “like” your child.

So we need to celebrate this graduation milestone, and be grateful that for whatever the cause, more children than ever stayed in school all the way… Then immediately after our cheer, we need to call every legislator we can think of, and cajole, demand, or plead they abandon Common Core before it destroys something great which is working…

You don’t tinker with something that is working….

It never comes out better…..