In the process of researching the What’s Good DC ? show on the dropout rate, I found a pretty cool tool.  A lot of the other fellows here are pretty into the idea of mapping projects, and Education Week has a great one. By going to their site, you can search for your school district by zip code, district name, or county, and see a report on nearby school districts’ graduation rates. But why look at graduation rates? Why can’t we just measure the number of kids who have dropped out?

Because when you’re talking about dropout rates, there’s no really efficient way of counting the number of dropouts.  What’s easier to measure is how many kids enrolled at a high school freshman year, and compare that to the number of kids who graduate senior year.  Subtract that percentage from 100 and you get a rough idea of who’s dropped out.

Of course it’s not a perfect measurement-people move away, die, transfer schools within the same district. But education stats people are working on a better model. So where does DCPS stack up? Check it out.