New System Slows Reporting of Graduation Rates

Just a few months short of the Class of 2012's high school graduation, the state Department of Education is still tallying the numbers for the Class of 2011.

Counting graduates was slowed as the department puts in place a new system for more accurately totaling up the number of students who make it through high school and how they do so, officials said.

The delay has also postponed the release of the state's annual School Report Cards. Typically released in February, the Report Cards provide data and analysis for every school on their test scores, class sizes and a host of other measures.

But the statewide and district graduation rates are a particular hot-button issue since the Christie administration has said it will be a central measure of a high school's performance and used in decisions about state interventions in the lowest-performing ones.

Under the old system, New Jersey has the highest graduation rate in the country at about 87 percent, the exact rate depending on the measure.

Officials said they expected to have the new graduation results finished in the next month, but they said it has been a complicated and labor-intensive process involving the input of data student by student, some of it going back four years.

Ordered by the federal government, New Jersey's data system -- dubbed NJ SMART -- follows individual students on a statewide basis, tracking where they come and go during the course of their four years in high school. Officials said once tabulated, it will likely bring down New Jersey's best-in-the-nation rates from previous district-reported ones.

"It's a seismic shift in just not how we are formulating this, but at a student level," said Bari Erlichson, the assistant education commissioner who is overseeing the work.

Training for district officials was held across the state, but Erlichson said the first round of data still led to more than 7,000 requests for corrections from districts. "We spent a great deal of time working through this student by student," Erlichson said.

Much of the work on NJ SMART is being done through a contract with Public Consulting Group, Inc., a Boston-based information management firm. The company was paid $6.3 million by the department last year, according to state records.

Read more at NJSpotlight.com