Alliance for Excellent Education releases 'snapshot' of nation's high schools

Washington, D.C. - The Alliance for Excellent Education is releasing an updated Florida State Card, which provides a summary of vital data regarding the state's high schools.

Now in its fourth year of publication, the 2008 State Card offers an overview of relevant high school statistics and other information for policymakers, government officials, and concerned citizens.

Available at http://www.all4ed.org/aboutthecrisis/sch ools/map, the Florida State Card is also distributed directly to Florida's U.S. Congressional delegation, governor, state legislators and some mayors.

"Information about each state's high schools, including how they perform in relation to national averages, is essential to any effort geared toward improving education in this country," says Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia.

"This is especially important right now, as Congress takes up renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act and considers ways to strengthen the law to address the needs of our high schools and their students."

The Florida State Card provides a concise and comprehensive profile of the state's high schools. For example, three different graduation rates are listed, demonstrating the disparity between statereported rates (68.7 percent), U.S. Department of Education-reported rates (66.4 percent), and independent research estimates (60.5 percent). Also compared are eighth-grade students' reading and math scores on the state test (47 percent and 60 percent) versus scores (25 percent and 26 percent) on the federally administered National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

In addition, the new State Card reports on:

NAEP eighth-grade reading scores broken down by subgroups

Graduation rates by race The state's "dropout factories" (schools where 60 percent or fewer of the students progress to twelfth grade in four years)

How the state fares in terms of developing effective systems that track individual student achievement over time, known as longitudinal data systems

The negative economic impact of dropouts

The state's percentage of highly qualified teachers

"Hopefully, the critical information on this card," says Wise, "will cause Congress to act this year on important legislation to improve high schools so that the numbers on next year's card show steady gains."

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The Alliance for Excellent Education is a Washington-based policy, research, and advocacy organization that works to make every child a graduate, prepared for postsecondary education and success in life.

For more information about the Alliance for Excellent Education, please visit www.all4ed.org.