A dispute has erupted over the results of a new study that shows that Minneapolis had the lowest high school graduation rate among 50 major cities.
The study, released by a Washington-based education group, showed less than 50 percent of Minneapolis students graduate within four years, and just 4 percent of all high school students in the city took the ACT or SAT college entrance exams.
Minnesota education officials are raising questions about the methodology and the data used by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which advocates for charter schools and opposes teacher tenure rules. State officials say the participation on college entrance exams, for instance, is much higher than the group is reporting.
"It does seem that there are some serious questions about the way the data was analyzed, and if it was accurate," said Josh Collins, the Minnesota Department of Education spokesman. "It's unclear to me if there are meaningful conclusions that could be drawn from it."
The study came out as Minneapolis school leaders face mounting pressure to improve student achievement, particularly among students of color. Minneapolis officials have long known that many students have struggled, but the study was the first recent effort to draw a comparison to schools in other major cities.
Researchers with CRPE say they used data that included all the cities and that was publicly available. They said there is "no one perfect system."
The intent of the study was not to dwell on individual numbers, researchers said, but to highlight schools in top-performing cities and allow other state and local school officials to find out what the successful districts are doing right.
"We want people to see the holistic view of their city," said Jose Hernandez, one of the researchers. "Obviously there are lows and highs, but we want them to look at their cities as a whole and weigh them against each other."