Orfield, Gary, Daniel Losen, and Johanna Wald. President and Fellows of Harvard College, “Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis.” Last modified 2004. Accessed February 13, 2014. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489177.pdf.

This article considers why high school graduation rates are low for all students, but particularly low for minority groups, and what can be done to ameliorate this problem. Official dropout statistics are often inaccurate. This article tries to focus on the disparities between graduation rates of minority vs. majority groups. The article asks three questions: “First, how deep and widespread are the racial disparities that exist at the state and district levels? Second, how has the misleading and incomplete reporting of this issue obscured both the magnitude of the crisis and its racial dimensions? Finally, focusing primarily on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, we ask whether state and federal accountability systems, as implemented, are appropriately structured to improve high school graduation rates, especially among children of color.”

The first type of data needed to answer these questions is graduation rate. In this study, the four lowest state graduation rates are used, organized by racial group. Additionally, graduation rates are given by district type. Data for State Graduation Rate Accountability is also used. To obtain graduation rates, the authors used the actual enrollment data that districts contribute to the nation’s Common Core of Data because they believe this data is the most accurate. The Graduation Rate Accountability data comes from a survey done by state officials in 2003 and 2004. The authors compare graduation rates among states and particularly between minority racial groups vs. whites to look for patterns. They also compare graduation rates between males and females. They compare these rates with Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) expectations. The State Graduation Rate Accountability programs are analyzed to see if they create true accountability.

At the end of the article, the authors make recommendations. These recommendations are based on their research and most are specific enough to be implemented. However, the exact steps to take to implement some of their recommendations are not offered and could be daunting. All of these recommendations, however, would be extremely helpful if they were given consideration by the federal government. This research strives to be independent and eliminate factors that may result in misleading data, and it does seem to consider concrete evidence in order to succeed at this. Overall, this research project was well executed.