Here's a cranky/tired dude's impression of all of the hooplah in the papers and on the web today regarding Education Week's newest tally of graduation rates, and the discrepancies about what New York City claims is the real number.

It's irrelevant.

Not just because the city's claim that the graduation rate (when you include relatively worthless GED's) is 53.2% is itself horrendous. Not just because the official tally reported by New York State for the city of 43.5% is itself disastrous, or even because the 38.9% graduation rate for the city tallied by Education Week is so pathetic.

The battles over the best methodology for determining dropout rates have put the city on the defensive, so the city Department of Education's reflexive comments are easily understood.

But all of these numbers are rosy compared with the even more telling "Regents graduation rate" for black and Hispanic students that Chancellor Joel Klein often touts in his speeches, and in his justifications for serious high school reform. I think Klein has (honorably) zeroed in on the most important stat we track: the percentage of kids who start school as ninth graders and who end up earning a Regents diploma four years later. That is, the ones who aren't getting a watered-down "local diploma," but one where they had to emerge showing they actually learned some basics along the way. The kind of diploma the kids in the suburbs get, seemingly without batting an eyelid.

For black and Hispanic students in NYC, less than 10% of freshmen leave with a Regents diploma after four years.

Just think about that.

So if you have a ninth grade homeroom with 30 black and/or Hispanic students in it, not even three of them will have a Regents diploma hanging on the wall after four years of high school.

Kind of makes the fight over a few percentage points here and there on the overall stuff seem like a waste of time to me. While the Education Week graduation rates are shocking and depressing, the city's own Regents diploma stats are immoral. You can agree or disagree with Klein on the reforms he's using to combat the problem, but I think you have to give him credit for cutting to the chase on the statistical issue to find the numbers that matter.

PS - Kudos, nonetheless, to Education Week for jumping into this one in a big way.