Before we start popping the corks on the champagne bottles, a new study by the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) lists the real graduation rate for MPS at only 46%. Is MPS inflating its numbers for political purposes? Are other organizations suppressing graduation rates for similar reasons? How can we figure out the true MPS graduation rate?

The reality is that it is very difficult to determine Milwaukee’s graduation rate chiefly because of student mobility. Students in poverty often change schools and school districts sometimes three or four times in a school year. Facing eviction, looking for employment, fleeing unsafe living conditions, many poor families are continually on the move. A child might get shuffled from mother to grandparent to uncle to another relative and back again throughout a student’s school years, from Mississippi to Milwaukee to Chicago and back again.

Ten years ago, I interviewed a teacher at Hopkins Elementary who had 30 students at the beginning and at the end of the year. But not one student in that class at the end of the year was there at the beginning of the school year – a 100% turnover in students.

Once a student leaves MPS for another system, we have no idea if that student graduates.

Mobility also means that students often get behind in getting their credits but ultimately do graduate. Add another 8% for students who graduate in five years and another 4% for students who graduate after six. Some students drop out only a credit or two from graduation but finish up at MATC. Just counting the number of ninth graders against the number that graduate four years later does not give us an accurate graduation rate.

Of course MPS left out of their equation all the students who left MPS for another school system, were expelled or incarcerated. Many of them will never graduate. So if we could add those students into our calculations, the MPS graduation rate would be much lower.

Wisconsin also counts students who pass the battery of tests for the GED2 (General Educational Development) for graduation. Other studies do not count GED students. Nevertheless, many GED graduates do go on to higher education, so there is some justification in counting those students.

Dates become important especially when graduation rates are rising. The EPE study uses 2004 graduation rates while MPS uses 2007 rates.

So just what is the MPS graduation rate? About all we can say for sure is that the MPS graduation rate is rising, but we have a long way to go.

A version of this article appeared in the Bay View Compass newspaper.