Revisions to education act are proposed

States will be required to use a uniform method of calculating graduation rates by the 2012-13 school year, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Tuesday in announcing proposed revisions to federal education regulations.

The push for adoption of a universal method comes three weeks after a study by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center revealed that only 52% of students graduated from high school in the principal public school districts of the country’s 50 largest cities. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, just 45% of students received diplomas.

Both figures were well below numbers reported to Washington, and officials expect that a uniform method of determining graduation rates will aid in identifying problem schools.

The proposed changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration’s signature domestic policy initiative, will be published in the Federal Register today. Congress has been wrestling for months over reauthorizing the law. If Congress does not act, the original law will remain as written, though some changes can be made administratively.

President Bush has been encouraging Spellings to consider those sorts of revisions.

“In January, I indicated that the secretary should move forward on reforms she can undertake administratively if Congress fails to act,” he said Tuesday in a statement released by the White House. “Secretary Spellings’ announced package of regulations and pilot programs will address the dropout crisis in America, strengthen accountability, improve our lowest-performing schools and ensure that more students get access to high-quality tutoring.”

Spellings discussed the proposals in Detroit, where fewer than 25% of students in the principal school district received diplomas after four years -- the lowest graduation rate of the 50 largest U.S. cities.

“Information is a powerful catalyst for change,” she said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club. “The more information we have, the better able we are to demand improvement -- and to get it.”

Under the proposed plan, only students who complete school on time with a regular degree will be counted as graduates. That would eliminate students who take additional time or who acquire an alternative to a diploma, such as a GED certificate.

“These new regulations are very encouraging,” said Daria Hall, assistant director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit that focuses on closing the achievement gap between minority and low-income students and their more affluent counterparts. “For far, far too long, states have used graduation-rate definitions that are inaccurate, inconsistent and did not provide communities, parents, educators or policymakers with the information they need.”

Current policy allows states to set their own methods for calculating graduation rates. As a result, figures are frequently overestimated, because reporting lower rates to Washington could cause more schools to be labeled as “failing” -- triggering such drastic penalties as firing teachers and principals or giving control of a school to a private operation.

For example, New Mexico defines its graduation rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th-graders who receive diplomas, ignoring students who drop out before the 12th grade. In California, districts report their graduation rates to the state, leading to fluctuations among districts and making comparisons difficult.

But instead of creating a national requirement for improvement based on the rates compiled through the new method, the proposals will still allow states to set their own improvement goals.

In California, officials have previously suggested that an annual increase of 0.1% in the graduation rate is sufficient for “improvement.” And in Nevada, state officials have set the threshold for improvement at a graduation rate of 50%.

Democrats argue that due to a lack of funding, some states have no choice but to set the bar low, since it’s their only opportunity to be considered successful.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who cosponsored the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, urged Bush “to reverse course in his tin-cup education budget and finally invest in the education of our children.” In a statement released by Kennedy’s office, he praised some of Spellings’ proposals as “important improvements for implementing No Child Left Behind.”

The proposed changes also call for schools to take greater initiative in informing parents of free tutoring programs available for low-income students in underperforming schools.

Public comments on the proposals will be accepted for 60 days, so none of the revisions will be finalized until fall, Spellings said.

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ben.dubose@latimes.com

Times staff writer Nicole Gaouette contributed to this report.