Counting Graduates

WaPo says the trade newspaper Education Week has come up with a new way to do an apples-to-apples comparison of graduation rates across state lines.

The analysis measures the change in the number of students enrolled in a high school class from freshman year to graduation. "It's only an estimate," the paper says, "because it doesn't account for students who transfer in and out of schools or those who repeat grades."

Howard County comes out looking pretty good, graduating 86.6 percent of its students, more than another other Maryland, Virginia or District school system except Loudoun and Frederick, according to the new metric.