For a school to make AYP that year, 45 percent of its students had to be proficient in reading and 35 percent in math. Only 22 of the district's 258 schools met that meager standard in 2002-03. The leap to 58 of 260 schools in 2003-04 seemed like a solid start.
But the four-year graduation rate in 2003 actually dropped from a woeful 48 percent to a dreadful 44 percent, which more than offset the glacial gains in reading and math achievement.
A year later, the district showed its most dramatic improvement when 160 of the 265 schools met the original standard. But the following year, when the standard rose to 54 percent proficiency in reading and 45 percent in math, only 49 percent of the schools met the mark.
But even the most cynical observer has to concede that what is now eight consecutive years of adequate yearly progress is too significant to ignore. They didn't break out the big cake this year, but the district is justifiably proud.
For the first time since that spike in '03-'04, more than half the district's students have made adequate yearly progress. About 63 percent are proficient in reading and 56 percent in math.
What's more important to me is that the six-year graduation rates have increased from 56 percent to 63 percent since 1998-99.
"Those are kids we would have lost," Superintendent Arlene Ackerman told me yesterday. "This is really important to the economics of the city when you look at it as a cost-benefit ratio."
The Alliance for Excellent Education did just that in a report called "the Economic Benefits of Reducing the Dropout Rate for Students of Color in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area."
It calculated the negative impact of the 16,400 African-American, Latino, American
