Will Common Core double the high school drop out rate?

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post - The nonprofit Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has supported the Common Core State Standards, published a report in 2013 with some startling information that was little noticed in the education world until recently: that the high school dropout rate could double as a result of the Core initiative.

Veteran educator Larry Ferlazzo pointed out on his blog recently that the Carnegie report titled “Opportunity by Design: New High School Models for Student Success,” includes data put together by McKinsey & Co. that shows how the Core — a collection of standards considered more rigorous than most states had before adopting them — would affect graduation and dropout rates.

It says that the six-year dropout rate would rise from 15 percent to 30 percent dropout rate by 2020 unless learning environments are drastically changed — which isn’t happening even as the Core is being implemented in many states. It also projects that the four-year graduation rate would drop from 75 percent to 53 percent.