This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 31st, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

No Child Left Behind places demands on states for graduation and student proficiency, but gives little guidance on

how to define either. Not surprisingly, dozens of states have redefined proficiency and

graduation requirements to avoid sanctions.

Neil McCluskey, Associate Director of Kido's Center for Educational Freedom,

says any attempt to crack down will leave states to avoid accountability in as yet

unimagined ways.

Two years ago I was reading in newspapers that

graduation rates. Many states school districts are failing to report adequate

graduation rates, two years later, here it is again. What's that route here?

The problem is, ultimately, I mean there are several problems that are rolled into this.

One of the primary problems is the same problem we see in any kind of school reporting, which is that is in the interest of the schools, the school districts, the people who run public

schooling to report as high a graduation rate as they can because that's what makes their

job easier. People lay off them, they don't say, oh, why aren't all these kids graduating?

There are other problems. There are a lot of questions about, well, how do you define a graduation rate?

You say it's, you say the number of kids who start in ninth grade

what percentage of them are graduating four years later? Do you say an eighth grade? Do you

count whether or not kids get a GED? But ordinarily what happens is the districts and the states they will define

graduation rates in the way that is most favorable to them.

That makes it easiest to say, oh we got lots of kids graduating.

But the reality is usually something different.

That there are lots of kids who don't end up graduating

...