Nationwide Graduation Rates Released

In this month's issue of Education Week (www.edweek.org), there is a fascinating article on the division of congressional districts and their corresponding graduation rates.

I'll be talking about this on the radio program today, but in case you want more information, here's a quick link:

http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/dc/2008/40congressional-map-scorecard.h27.pdf

From this link, you'll see a map of all the congressional districts in the United States, along with their graduation rate. Here's a snapshot:

• Cook County, Illinois (where I grew up): 76-85%
• Pima County, Arizona (where I live now): 56-75% (a HUGE range of percentages, depending on which district - of course, the areas of the county that are generally considered low-socioeconomic reflect a low graduation rate)
• Most of Wisconsin: 76-85%, with a large portion of the state indicating the highest graduation rate level in the U.S.

What's also interesting is that you can look up your state congressional representative and see graduation rate within his/her district. Here are some rates for our local representatives:

• Raul Grijalva (7th Congressional District): 66.8%
• Gabrielle Giffords (8th Congressional District): 70.7%
• Ed Pastor (4th Congressional District): 51.5%

It will be interesting to see if any dialogue about the connection of congressional districts, and how a political division can play out or, at least reflect, the local graduation rates.

Just some food for thought....thanks for reading!

Alisa