Buying a Pig in a Poke
ACTA has long contended that Arlington County taxpayers are getting ordinary services for extraordinary prices. That assertion was born out again by a story in today’s Alexandria-Arlington weekly section of the Washington Post, which took “a closer look at area rates of graduation.” The Post story began:
“Although high schools in the Washington region are showing steady improvement on measures such as Advanced Placement testing and end-of-course exams, that success might not be translating to higher graduation rates, according to the latest data from a Bethesda nonprofit group that is a leading authority on high school completion rates.
“The official graduation rates published by states and school systems are widely regarded as inflated and unreliable. Many in the field have come to rely instead on the annual Diplomas Count report from Editorial Projects in Education, publisher of the trade newspaper Education Week.
“The report estimates how many students in ninth grade graduate on time with their class, using a series of calculations that measure attrition from one grade level to the next.”
The Post warned, however,that:
“Because the numbers are dated, they are of limited use in assessing how well the school systems are doing now. But after three consecutive reports, the Diplomas Count effort gives a good glimpse of trends in the middle of the decade.”
Since the Post provided only the graduation rates for 2003, 2004, and 2005, we have supplied the cost-per-student for 2006 (from the earliest WABE guide available on the APS website) in order to provide an economic frame of reference for the graduation rate performance. Here are just a few of the numbers:
Graduation Rate/Cost-per-Student
- Arlington 75.7/$14,464
- Alexandria 71.5/$15,871
- Fairfax 79.9/$11,915
- Loudoun 92.9/$11,379
- Prince William 68.0/$9,374
While not a perfect picture that Arlington’s taxpayers are not getting their tax dollars worth, it’s still an indication that management of Arlington’s public schools need to do a better job of making school finances more transparent. A step in the right direction would be for the School Board to call for a school division efficiency review, which are performed by a third-party, and paid for by the Commonwealth. More than 30 Virginia school divisions' reviews have been completed to determine how wisely tax dollars are spent. More importantly, the three newest School Board members have pledged that they support such reviews.