In a comprehensive action intended to change how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) law is carried out, the U.S. Secretary of Education formally proposed a package of new regulations that would require state and local school officials to provide more and better information about high school graduation rates, student test performance, and the…

This article reports on plans by the Bush administration to set a uniform way for states to calculate and report their graduation rates, which could make it harder for high schools to avoid accountability measures under the No Child Left Behind Act. In the U.S. Department of Education's latest move to refine the implementation of the NCLB law,…

North Carolina says it graduates 97 percent of its high school students, while Washington state reports it gives diplomas to just 66 percent. But researchers, using methods they believe are more accurate, estimate that the two states' graduation rates are essentially the same, at around 64 percent. Acknowledging that such disparities in data are…