Hiding Behind the Numbers
by Glenn Pasanen, Gotham Gazette, 20 Mar 2006

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New Yorkers recently learned that the syphilis infection rate is down nine percent in the city, while the cost of asphalt is up $6.82 a ton. It takes 2.4 minutes less now than it used to for the average person to get help on the phone for a parking ticket. The Staten Island Ferry is increasingly late.

They learned all this from newspaper reports in the Staten Island Advance and the New York Times about a document called the Preliminary Mayors Management Report.

But what New Yorkers did not learn is that it costs $278 million more a year to dispose of the citys garbage because the Fresh Kills landfill closed  bolstering the argument by critics who questioned the wisdom of closing it in the first place.

They also did not learn why it is taking longer for the fire department to respond to fires, why more people are dying in fires, or how the mayor plans to address the problem.

And they did not learn why the police department is spending more money (nearly $4 billion a year) and paying more in overtime ($400 million a year) even though there are fewer police officers on the force.

The mayor's management report is supposed to be one of the central ways to measure the performance of city government. And, by law, the report is supposed to be a tool to help lawmakers decide how to spend the citys $50 billion annual budget.

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been praised for bringing new technologies and a business-like approach to city government, his administration is particularly stingy when it comes to sharing vital information with the public, and his approach to the mayor's management report is a prime example.

For all of the numbers and data that do come out of the mayors office, much of the most important information is not available, making it difficult for New Yorkers to assess how well the government is doing its job, and the direction it is setting for the future.

MEASURING THE CITY
Since 1977, the mayor has been required by the City Charter to issue two reports each year designed to measure how responsive city government is to the people it serves:

" The Preliminary Mayors Management Report (released in February) evaluates each city agencys performance over the first four months of the fiscal year and presents goals for the future.

" The Mayors Management Report (issued in September) examines how each agency actually performed over the fiscal year.

Each mayor has used these reports in differing ways.

A new approach to government accountability -- officially called "performance assessment" but more colloquially, compstatmania -- compiles, analyzes and interprets statistics in order to spot trends, gaps and overlaps in city services. It's not magic -- it's hard work, and follow-up. In this series, Gotham Gazette looks at this approach to improving city services.

Ed Koch used it as a kind of report card, issuing Cs to commissioners that he did not think measured up. David Dinkins painted a picture of New York City's growing social problems in an effort to win state and federal aid. Rudolph Giuliani made a grand show of his presentations, describing with dozens of graphs and charts how the city had become a better place under his leadership.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, by contrast, has trimmed the report to about a third of its previous size, put information online rather than in a large print book, and spends little effort on drawing attention to it.

In February, when he released his most recent Preliminary Management Report - which provides information from July to October of 2005 -- Mayor Bloomberg said that his administration has an excellent record of achievement and continued strong performance in the delivery of city services.

In other words, he highlighted the good news and downplayed the bad news.

The good news in the report is that:

"The number of murders is the lowest since 1963
" Felony crimes are down 4 percent
" The average police response time is six seconds faster
" 93 percent of city streets are acceptably clean
" The number of pothole repairs increased by 5 percent
" 97 percent of troublesome trees were removed in 30 days
" New cases of childhood lead poisoning declined by 9 percent
" And the number of children in foster care is at the lowest point since 1987.

The bad news is that:

" Only 53 percent of high school students graduate in four years
" The average fire department response time is 14 seconds slower
" 22 people died in fires, eight more than the same period last year
" 54 people died in traffic accident, six more than in the same period last year
" It took more than 6 hours on average to respond to a broken elevator complaint in public housing, 1 hour more than last year
" The Staten Island Ferry is slower
"And lawsuits against the city are up.

One of the most important statistics, Bloomberg said, is that citizens have unprecedented access to government through the 311-call line, which is being used by more New Yorkers every month. During the four months time examined by the report, the city received 4.2 million calls, three quarters of which were answered in 30 seconds or less.

While the 311 data is a potentially valuable source of information on city services, the Bloomberg administration fails to share the information with other elected officials, the City Council, or local community boards, which are charged with monitoring the well-being of their particular neighborhoods.

Overall, the Bloomberg administration has cut agency budget and performance data to the bone, arguing that less is better. Sometimes less is simply a lot less.

USEFUL INFORMATION OR OUTDATED EXERCISE?
So what are average New Yorkers to make of all of this data? And is it an accurate and helpful snapshot of the city government?

In the past, Mayor Bloomberg has argued that the report is not very useful.

In 2003, he even asked his charter revision commission to look into whether or not it should be eliminated. After a series of hearings, the mayoral commission came to the conclusion that the Preliminary Management Report is:

" Outdated and rooted in mid-1970s thinking
" Not an effective means of assessing or improving performance
" And a waste of money.

The commission placed an initiative on the ballot to eliminate it.

Opponents of the plan to kill the report, like the New York City Council, argued that it was one of the few ways to hold city agencies accountable.

On Election Day, voters rejected the measure - and so Mayor Bloomberg continues to issue the report begrudgingly.

Although at one time the city was a trailblazer in performance reporting, a recent report from the Independent Budget Office states, the lack of linkage between performance data reported in the [preliminary mayor's management report] and elsewhere, and clear spending information, makes it difficult for citizens, elected officials, and even agency mangers to know what they are getting for their money and to evaluate alternatives.

CRITIQUING THE MAYORS NUMBERS
There are a number of problems with the Preliminary Mayors Management Report in its current form.

1. Missing Numbers  Millions for Garbage

One problem of the report is that it does not break down budget figures to show how each agency spends its money.

For example, the Department of Education section reports that between July and October of 2005 the agency spent $4.3 billion on education, about $422 million more than the same time last year. Overtime costs are also up from $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion for the same period.

But the report makes no effort to explain how the money is being spent, why overtime costs have increased, or if there are plans to spend more or less over the rest of the fiscal year.

In other places, the mayors report simply omits some crucial financial information.

For example, in the current report the Department of Sanitation section does not say that roughly 25 percent of the sanitation budget goes to contractors since the closing of the Fresh Kills landfill by the Giuliani administration. According to the Independent Budget Offices analysis, $278 million goes to seven private vendors through waste-export contracts that move the waste out of town.

The administration does not provide this information because the money is paid to private contractors  and that kind of information is reported in another document called Agency Procurement that comes out once a year.

The mayors report also does not say a word about the administrations long-term plans to deal with the rising costs of the current waste disposal system even though the mayor and City Council are supposed to agree to such a plan this summer and even though the charter mandates that each agency present goals for the next year.

2. Confusing Measurements  Graduation Rates

In other areas, the administration presents a dizzying array of categories of measurement  or indicators - that obscure what is really happening.

For example, the Department of Education reports that only 53.2 percent of high school students graduate in four years, which is down from 54.3 percent the year before. The number of students that graduate in seven years (67.6 percent) is also down from the previous year.

But this year, the Department of Education has now added a third category: Students Graduating High School Within 4 years OR Still Enrolled in School for a Fifth Year.

By combining two groups of students into one category, the administration can claim that 84.8 percent of students are on track to graduate or earn their Regents diploma.

This indicates that more students are opting to stay in school at least an additional year to work towards graduation, the report states.

Some experts disagree.

This misinformation is devastating, writes Daniel Losen of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard Law School in an article for Gotham Gazette. How can we know if we are doing better if we do not get an accurate reading of where the issues lies? It also affects where resources are allocated. We are not going to spend enough if our focus on the problem isnt sharp, and we cant see whats really going on.

3. Few Answers  Unexplained Fire Deaths

The Preliminary Mayors Management Report also offers few explanations for why certain things may occur.

For example, 22 people died in fires between July and October, eight more than in the same time last year. The fire departments response time is also 14 seconds slower; it takes an average of 4 minutes and 37 seconds for the department to get to a scene.

The mayor said the response time was due in part to an increase in house fires. And the report states only that the department has taken steps to reduce the key components of response time.

The information raises more questions than it answers.

What has led to the increase in response times? Were the deaths concentrated in specific boroughs or neighborhoods? Are slower response time linked to the six firehouses that the Mayor Bloomberg closed in 2003? Does new fire equipment that needs to be purchased? Does the department need to hire more firefighters?

In previous reports, at least the administration attempted to answer some of these questions.

There used to be footnotes that offered explanation of why an indicator may have gone up or down, said Preston Niblack of the Independent Budget Office. We lost some of that when it was reorganized [under Bloomberg].

A NEW APPROACH
Instead of scrapping the report or continuing the annual exercise in its current form, some experts are pointing to ways that the Preliminary Mayors Management Report can be made into a useful tool.

One idea is to return to one of the original goals of the report, which was to link the data from each agency to help make decisions about how to allocate funds. The Independent Budget Office recently issued a budget analysis that tries to create more clear connections between how the city spends money and the results that it gets in return.

For example, in the Independent Budget Offices report on the Department of Health, one can see that the mayoral administration has spent more money for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, an increase from $32.1 million in 2005 to $43.5 million in 2006. And in turn, the number of cases of tuberculosis is down (from 124,695 in 2005 to 122,239 in 2006), and the Department of Health is treating a higher percentage of the confirmed cases in the city.

While it is tricky to draw clear connections between the amount of money the city government spends on a particular effort and the results, the approach can be a productive look further into what government is  or is not  doing well.

You have to be careful and dig deeper before you make conclusions, said Niblack. But it should help people to start asking the right questions.

The Independent Budget Office has also shown just what can be done to create clear, accountable budgeting, using the citys own data.

Another suggestion is to require the administration to conduct citizen satisfaction surveys as part of the Preliminary Mayors Management Report. These surveys, which could track different responses by age, race, gender, and other socio-economic categories, could help bring a more customer service-oriented approach to city government. Last year, City Council considered legislation that would institute this change  and is likely to revisit the issue again in the future.

A third suggestion  which has been adopted by other cities and states - is to combine the two management reports with the mayors budget proposal into one document that would clearly lay out the mayors financial requests for each agency in terms of past and current performance and future goals.

This would allow the City Council, which is charged with holding public hearings on the budget, to monitor more carefully how taxpayer dollars are being spent.

"The Charter clearly intends the [preliminary mayor's management report] to relate performance measures to proposed budget appropriations so that the council& can consider what agencies have accomplished or produced with the resources allocated, and the effect of budget proposals, during the budget process, a City Council report on the issue concluded. Otherwise it falls far short of achieving its intended purpose.

Mayor Bloomberg could break down agency budget information by program and provides sufficient new performance data that would enable an analyst -- or any interested New Yorker-- to measure results. Until that happens, this administration remains a $50 billion operation apparently unwilling to address management accountability.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Mayors Management Report for 2005: Thinner, Less Useful (October 2005)

The Mayors Management Report Skimps On Information About Education And Everything Else (October 2004)

Shrinking Accountability: Proposed Changes To The Mayor's Management Report (October 2003)

Guide To The Mayor's Management Report (October 2002)

Glenn Pasanen, who teaches political science at Lehman College, has been in charge of Gotham Gazette's finance topic page since 2001.

Mayor's Office of Operations

Behind the Dropout Rate
by Daniel J. Losen, Gotham Gazette, 20 Mar 2006

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Slightly more than half of all New York City high school students graduate on-time, according to the Preliminary Mayor's Management Report, the administrations accounting of its success and failures. Even by the administrations own counting, this represented a slight decline from the previous year. And a few days later, the State Education Department released its own graduation rate for the city and found it to be far worse -- 43.5 percent.

The difference in the numbers points up the lack of good information about high school completion in New York. The drop out data is not accurate; the definitions are constantly changing. There must be at least three different kinds of students who are considered graduates. In some reports, they count people who receive GEDs as a graduate. In some reports, they dont count them. In some reports, alternative certificates count. In some they dont. On and on and on. Its very confusing.

The failure of so many students to earn a real diploma is a major issue in the state and the city, as well as across the county. And when we dont see exactly what is going on, broken down by race, by ethnicity, by disabilities, by socioeconomic status, we dont have the basis to judge whether what we are trying to do is effective. You need an accurate understanding of what the problems are before you can design appropriate solutions.

The graduation rate crisis is not unique to New York or to New York City. But with regard to Latino and black students, New York is probably the worse state in the nation in terms of who is enrolled in ninth grade and who earns a real diploma on time four years later.

According to estimates of the national graduation rate data crunched by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., theres a 50-50 prospect of graduating on time if you are black, Latino or native American. When you disaggregate this further by gender, you find that black, Latino and Native American males have less than a 50 percent likelihood of earning a real diploma. And by real diplomas, I dont mean GEDs, and I dont mean alternative certificates. Were talking about a real diploma. Thats what you need to get into a college or have a meaningful career of gainful employment

WHO COUNTS AS A DROPOUT
There has been a state requirement that a student has to have been in high school for two years to count as a graduate or a dropout. So all the kids who drop out in ninth grade or tenth grade have been removed from the whole calculation. Now they are going to change this so students have to be in high school for only five months to be counted. But still all of the students who come into ninth grade and drop out right away are removed from the calculation. Basically, they disappear. The effect of that is to make the graduation rate look a lot higher than it really is.

Any student who is in the juvenile justice system is not counted as part of New York graduation rate. These are the students we should be most concerned about, but we dont know what is happening to them.

WHO COUNTS AS A GRADUATE
In the reports on New York City, students who receive a GED are counted as graduates. The benefit of earning a GED, according to national research, is just a slight improvement over dropping out. On the other hand, there is a tremendous difference between earning a GED and earning a bona fide high school diploma.

Federal law requires that in calculating graduates for the purposes of No Child Left Behind, you look at students who graduate from secondary school with regular diplomas. The federal requirement does not count GED students, and the graduation rate is the percentage of students measured from the beginning of high school. Not counting them if they havent been there two years is just something that the State of New York has made up.

THE RACIAL DIVIDE
A study done by Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins looked at school district data and state data and found that approximately 84 percent of minority students in major cities in New York attended what he called drop out factories. A drop out factory is where less than 60 percent of ninth graders are still enrolled in 12th grade  regardless of whether they get a diploma. If all of the ninth graders showed up in 12th grade, the schools would fall under their weight. Thats how bad a situation we have.

In real numbers - I took this off the state web site -- there are 46,298 students enrolled in grade 12 this year. Thats only 49 percent of the 93,775 ninth graders who were enrolled in 2002-03. And this is actually a 10 percent improvement from previous years.

When you disaggregate race and gender for the class of 2001 in the State of New York 28.6 percent of Latino male and just under 30 percent of black males who started ninth grade graduate with a real diploma four years later. The goal in the state of New York is 55 percent. Thats the goal. Theyre shooting for a 55 percent graduation rate. Its just outrageous.

New York City is not the worst city in the state. In Syracuse, just over a quarter of all students who start ninth grade graduate with a diploma on time.

But in New York City for the class of 2001, 32 percent of blacks and just over 30 percent of Latino students graduate with a diploma on time. The citys official report gives an inflated rate. It states that for blacks and Hispanics, the rates are around 41 percent in terms of who graduates on time. And, it says, if you go five, years, six years seven years out, these rates improve. But the city does not tell you that probably most of those are not real diplomas, certainly not Regents diplomas.

This misinformation is devastating. How can we know if we are doing better if we do not get an accurate reading of where the problems lie? It also affects where resources are allocated. We are not going to spend enough if our focus on the problem isnt sharp, and we cant see whats really going on.

ASSESSING ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMS
This also concerns one of the solutions you hear a lot about -- alternative schools. Some of the alternative schools are fantastic, filled with dedicated educators who do wonderful things for kids who are at risk and need these programs. But there also are alternative schools where kids are being warehoused, where they are being enrolled in GED programs, where we dont know if theyre staying in school or dropping out. These students are not getting the kind of education they need to get a real diploma.

In designing and investing in alternative programs it is important to have data so we can know who is going and can then evaluate whether these programs are effective or not. If they are warehousing kids and simply making the graduation rates look better, everyone can pat themselves on the back while the kids wind up in prison.

SPECIAL ED STUDENTS
For kids with disabilities, the situation is even worse. According to a report issued by Advocates for Children in June 2005 called Leaving Schools Empty-handed, only 11.84 percent of students who receive special education leave school with a Regents or local diploma. Only four percent of the kids with emotional disturbance where blacks student are disproportionately represented  wind up with a real diploma. Less than 1 percent of students in special education who end up in one of the GED programs actually earn a GED. There are so-called IEP (for individual education plan) diplomas drawn up specifically for special education students. Nobody feels a special education diploma is even roughly equivalent to a Regents diploma. But students who receive them are reported as having graduated.

When we try to evaluate our policies, we weigh whether or not we need more prisons, more money invested in juvenile justice and more police in our high schools or whether we need to train teachers better and invest in a higher quality of special education and in proven effective alternative schools. If, as policy makers, we dont have accurate data, we are not going to be able to make those decisions. And eventually the public will pay the cost through increased crime and welfare costs and a lack of tax dollars from income that doesnt get generated because there is no gainful employment for people who get a GED.

Daniel J. Losen is senior education law and policy associate with the Civil Rights Project at Harvard Law School

Who Graduates? Who Doesn't?

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It is generally acknowledged that completing high school represents a key milestone in an individual's schooling and social and economic advancement and that graduation rates are an important indicator of school system performance. Nevertheless, graduation rates have not been a major focus of educational statistics reporting in the past. At the very least, these measures have generated far less attention and interest than test scores. Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became federal law in January 2002, high school graduation rates have gained an increasingly important place in educational policy circles. The federal law for the first time requires that high schools and school systems be held accountable in a meaningful way for graduation rates as well as performance on academic assessments. This important step in the evolution of federal accountability has generated a considerable amount of debate over a variety of issues including: the state of the nation with regard to this key measure of educational fitness; graduation levels among particular student subgroups (such as historically disadvantaged minorities); the ways in which states are implementing graduation rate accountability required under the law; and even the best methods for measuring graduation rates.

This study, the latest in a series of investigations conducted by the Urban Institute, contributes to the growing body of knowledge in this field of inquiry by providing the most extensive set of systematic empirical findings on public school graduation rates in the United States available to date. Detailed descriptive statistics and analytic results are presented for the nation as a whole, by geographical region, and for each of the states. This study also offers an exceptionally detailed perspective on the issue of high school completion by examining graduation rates for the overall student population, for specific racial and ethnic groups, and by gender. We also analyze graduation rate patterns for particular types of school districts, with special attention to the systems in which the nation's most socioeconomically disadvantaged students are educated.

High school graduation rates are calculated using a measure called the Cumulative Promotion Index or CPI. This indicator, developed at the Urban Institute, offers several significant advantages over other commonly reported graduation rate statistics. Paired with data from the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data (CCD), we are able to compute graduation rates for the high school class of 2001 in nearly every public school district in the nation.

The findings presented in this report do not paint a flattering portrait of high school graduation for public schools in the United States.

The national graduation rate is 68 percent, with nearly one-third of all public high school students failing to graduate.
Tremendous racial gaps are found for graduation rates.
Students from historically disadvantaged minority groups (American Indian, Hispanic, Black) have little more than a fifty-fifty chance of finishing high school with a diploma.
By comparison, graduation rates for Whites and Asians are 75 and 77 percent nationally.
Males graduate from high school at a rate 8 percent lower than female students.
Graduation rates for students who attend school in high poverty, racially segregated, and urban school districts lag from 15 to 18 percent behind their peers.
A great deal of variation in graduation rates and gaps among student groups is found across regions of the country as well as the states.
These findings may strike many readers as surprising and troublesome. This study provides the most compelling evidence to date that the nation finds itself in the midst of a serious, broad-based, and (until recently) unrecognized crisis in high school completion. In part, this crisis has gone undetected for a lack of in-depth national investigations into the issue based on solid statistics and methods. Understanding the depth and breadth of a problem, however, is a crucial first step in devising a solution. The goal of the Urban Institute's work and the detailed analysis presented in this report is to help decision makers and the public to better understand the depth and breadth of the nation's apparent high school graduation crisis and the factors that are associated with low graduation rates. Armed with better knowledge, we will be more likely to identify and implement promising intervention strategies for struggling schools.

1. INTRODUCTION
High school graduation rates have gained increasing prominence as a key issue in educational policy circles since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed into law in January of 2002. For individuals, a high school diploma has long been recognized as an essential step towards economic and social well-being. Individuals with higher levels of education (and more advanced credentials) enjoy higher income, more stable employment, and less dependency on public assistance. Those with more education are also less likely to experience a variety of detrimental social outcomes, including early childbearing, reports of ill health, incarceration, or criminal victimization. For school systems, graduation rates also represent a key indicator of performance. Schools and districts in which more students earn high school diplomas are generally regarded as better performers. In truly highly-achieving school systems, of course, mastery over a meaningful body of knowledge and skills should also be a prerequisite for earning a diploma.

Despite nearly universal recognition that completing high school is a key milestone in an individual's schooling and an important indicator of system performance, graduation rates have not been a major focus of educational statistics reporting in the past. At the very least, these measures have generated far less attention and interest than test scores. The No Child Left Behind Act, however, has sparked a renewed interest in graduation rates. The federal law for the first time requires that high schools and school systems be held accountable in a meaningful way for graduation rates as well as performance on academic assessments. This important step in the evolution of federal accountability has generated a considerable amount of debate over a variety of issues including: the state of the nation with regard to this key measure of educational fitness; graduation levels among particular student subgroups (such as historically disadvantaged minorities); the ways in which states are implementing graduation rate accountability required under the law; and even the best methods for measuring graduation rates.

This report contributes to the growing body of knowledge in this field by providing the most extensive set of systematic empirical findings on public school graduation rates available to date for the nation as a whole and for each of the states. In this report, we calculate high school graduation rates using a measure called the Cumulative Promotion Index or CPI. This indicator, developed at the Urban Institute, offers several significant advantages over other commonly reported graduation rate statistics.

The CPI method adheres to the definition of the high school graduation rate specified by NCLB, so it could be used for purposes of federal accountability.
Calculating the graduation rate using CPI requires information on enrollment and diploma counts, and avoids the notoriously unreliable dropout data upon which some other methods rely.
The CPI makes very modest demands on data systems, so it can be calculated for virtually every public school district in the country using information available to the general public.
The CPI indicator can be calculated after only two years of data collection, as opposed to four years for most other methods.
Since the CPI employs a focused one-year window of observation, it may be particularly desirable for application in accountability systems. Compared to other approaches, the CPI places a stronger emphasis on current educational conditions and would be quicker to detect improvements related to on-going reform initiatives.
This study takes the CPI method and applies it to data from the Common Core of Data (CCD). This U.S. Department of Education database is the most comprehensive national source of information on public schools and local education agencies. The CCD also offers the only means of directly comparing graduation rates for school systems across the country using data defined and reported in a uniform manner. By pairing the CPI indicator with the CCD data, graduation rates for the high school class of 2001 can be computed for nearly all public school districts in the nation.

In general, the findings of this report do not paint an encouraging portrait of high school graduation for public schools in the United States. Nationwide, the overall graduation rate for the class of 2001 was 68 percent. As disconcerting as this national statistic may be, focusing on the this figure alone would fail to call attention to the truly troubling situation that describe the educational experiences for particular student groups. Results consistently point to certain areas that should be of grave concern to educators and policy makers. When results are broken down by race and ethnicity, we find that more than 75 percent of White and Asian students completed high school with a diploma. By stark contrast, however, the same could be said for barely half of students from historically disadvantaged minority groups. Graduation rates for Black, American Indian, and Hispanic students were 50, 51, and 53 percent respectively. Male students complete high school at consistently lower levels than females. Graduation rates are also substantially lower for students educated in highly-segregated, socio-economically disadvantaged, and urban school systems. Strong regional disparities consistently emerge from the findings, as does a tremendous amount of variation in the performance of individual states.

Many readers will find these results surprising and troublesome. This study provides the most compelling evidence to date that the nation finds itself in the midst of a serious, broad-based, and (until recently) unrecognized crisis in high school completion. In part, this crisis has gone undetected for a lack of in-depth national investigations into the issue based on solid statistics and methods. Understanding the depth and breadth of a problem, however, is a crucial first step in devising a solution. The goal of the Urban Institute's work and the detailed analysis presented in this report is to help decision makers and the public to better understand the depth and breadth of the nation's apparent high school graduation crisis and the factors that are associated with low graduation rates. Armed with such knowledge, we will be more likely to identify and implement promising intervention strategies for struggling schools.

Following this introduction (Section 1), the remainder of this report is organized as follows.

Section 2 provides a discussion of the Data and Method used in this study.
Section 3 offers an overview of the study's descriptive findings. An emphasis is placed on graduation rate results for the student population as a whole, and results disaggregated for racial-ethnic subgroups and by gender. Graduation rates for different kinds of school districts are also examined.
Section 4 conducts more sophisticated bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses in order to investigate the linkages between graduation rates and district context, particularly relating to levels of socio-economic disadvantage and segregation.
Section 5 offers a brief conclusion to the analytic portion of the study.
Section 6 comprises the bulk of this document. Here we present a series of individual data profiles for the Nation, Regions of the country, and the 50 States plus the District of Columbia. These profiles contain a summary of graduation rate findings, broken down by student subgroups and district characteristics. The state profiles include results for the 10 largest school systems under their respective jurisdictions. Demographic data are also included in these profiles, which is essential for placing graduation rate findings into an appropriate social and educational context.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

Silver accuses Klein of lying about schools

By Ronda Kaysen

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has called for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to apologize for his comments about funding cuts to two new Downtown schools and has called on the mayor to consider replacing him.

The mayor ought to seriously think about replacing the chancellor who outright lies, Silver told Downtown Express in a telephone interview Wednesday. I'm calling for him to apologize for speaking about what is clearly untrue.

Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that 21 city schools were being cut from the city's capital budget because of a lack of funding from the state and another 68 were in danger of being cut. The two Manhattan schools on the list, a K-8 planned for Beekman St. and a new annex for P.S. 234 in Tribeca, were part of an agreement between the community and developers signed by Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and City Councilmember Alan Gerson. The agreement promised the schools in exchange for selling public land to private developers to build high rise residential developments and set aside $44 million in the Dept. of Education's capital budget for the Beekman school.

P.S. 234, the neighborhood's only zoned elementary school east of West St. is already at 120 percent capacity as the area braces for 13,000 new residential units in the next five years.

Klein told Downtown Express last week that the money was always dependent on state funding and the $44 million had been spent on other school projects. It's a written contract, he [Klein] is an attorney, he's setting a poor example for the children, said Silver. The best thing he can do is be silent when the mayor is playing a political game.

The schools' funding has been a characterized as a highly political fight between the city and the state. The state has failed to deliver a court ordered payout from a Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit of $5.6 billion a year in operational funds and a one-time payment of $9 billion in capital funds to city schools. The mayor also insists that the state's capital budget has not included Dept. of Education capital funding for the past two years, amounting to a $1.8 billion shortfall in the city's budget.

Chancellor Klein is as eager as Speaker Silver to have these schools built, said Stephen Morello, a Dept. of Ed. spokesperson, in response to Silver's comments. He said nothing that I'm aware of to contradict the agreement for Downtown development that includes the schools. He merely pointed out that the capital funding has always depended on a match from the state government.

The mayor has singled out Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Governor George Pataki in his attacks. The schools Bloomberg selected are in key legislative districts, with the two Downtown schools sitting squarely in Silver's district. A source in the mayor's office told Downtown Express that the Downtown schools were selected to get Silver's attention. Originally, Bloomberg intended to cut funding for 23 schools, but shortly before the cuts were announced, the mayor pulled two Brooklyn schools from the list, and Silver pointed out they are in State Senator Martin Golden's district, a Republican who supported Bloomberg's bid for reelection.

Last week, Bruno described the judge's C.F.E. ruling as lunacy, indicating that he has no intentions of delivering the money. Bloomberg aides had previously hinted that the mayor, a Republican, might support Democratic Senate candidates to unseat Bruno. But the mayor appears to be making headway with Bruno, confirming earlier this week that he and the majority leader met privately to discuss the issue. He also indicated that he intends to support Bruno in his reelection bid.

Bloomberg will meet privately with Silver on Wednesday evening, the speaker told Downtown Express.

Silver met with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer to discuss filing a lawsuit to halt the residential developments tied to the two Downtown schools. If the mayor is backing out of paying the contract price then the whole contract shouldn't go forward, he said.

The $64 million K-8 on Beekman St. will be housed in a 75-story mixed-use tower owned by developer Bruce Ratner. Silver negotiated the deal with Bloomberg and Ratner to secure the 98,000-sq. ft., 4-story site. Silver has been in discussions with Ratner to keep the space available.

He [Ratner] has the ability to push the school out of the property if there's no contract signed, said Silver. I have asked him to hold on and watch this play out. So far he has agreed. The question is how long will it play out?

We're continuing to work on the Beekman project and we're hopeful that things will work out with the school, said Michele de Milly, a spokesperson for Forest City Ratner, Bruce Ratner's development firm. The school issue has not yet impacted the construction schedule for the Frank Gehry designed building, which is slated to break ground next month.

Bloomberg recently backed away from focusing on the C.F.E. payout, which is still tied up in the courts. At a press conference last week, he stressed he was focusing on capital funds, not the C.F.E. funds. What 21 schools? Bloomberg asked a Downtown Express reporter in response to a question about the schools. The lawsuit, Bloomberg said, will see another decision in a few months; but whichever side wins will appeal, meaning the process could drag on for a few more years, he noted. What we're talking about here is capital funds, which has nothing to do with the C.F.E. lawsuit, he told reporters at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs on Houston St.

Silver thinks the mayor should focus his efforts to secure the C.F.E. funds. To this day, the mayor has refused to publicly ask the governor not to appeal the C.F.E. decision, said Silver. Two years ago, the state Assembly passed legislation in its budget to deliver $6.1 billion in operating aid and $1.3 billion in capital funds to the city. Neither the state Senate nor the governor supported the initiative and the mayor did not come out in support of the Assembly's initiative at the time.

The mayor was nowhere to be found to ratify their decision, said Silver. He doesn't want to recognize that he's a Johnny Come Lately.

Bloomberg is continuing his effort to rally the public behind his call for state funding, dispatching his supporters to the 19 community boards with schools on the chopping block.

Most New Yorkers don't hesitate to speak their mind, but if you want to find the most outspoken advocates in any given neighborhood, go to a community board meeting, said Stu Loeser, a spokesperson for the mayor, in a statement. Dep. Mayor Dennis Walcott will attend Community Board 1 meeting on March 21 at 6 p.m. at P.S. 89 on Warren and West Sts.

C.B. 1 is eager to have the opportunity to address the mayor's office. It's very important for him to hear directly from the parents, said C.B. 1 chairperson Julie Menin. Parents are very distressed about this issue.

With reporting by Lincoln Anderson