DID THE CLEVELAND SCHOOLS GRADUATE HALF OF THE CLASS OF '04?

I looked at the Cleveland school levy campaign's new website yesterday, and was shocked to see a claim repeated in several places that the CMSD's 2004 graduation rate was 47%. (The site actually says that this was a near-doubling of a 28% grad rate in 1996, which raises its own big questions, but that's another story.) So I went to the Ohio Department of Education site and found their current report card numbers for the CMSD. (Start here, click on "Begin", click on "Graduation Rate" and keep going.)

Lo and behold, they're showing a graduation rate of 49.4% for the Class of 2004!

As far as I can tell, this is the only way to find the number... it's not on the 2003-2004 District Report Card, which lists the Class of 2003 grad rate (about 41%... hence my mistake in the chart here, for which I must now apologize.)

The campaign's use of 47% instead of 49% may betray some nervousness about ODOE's figure at the School Administration Building. And I'd still like to know where Byrd-Bennett is getting that 28% figure for 1996, since the last published version of the grad rate for that year was ten points higher. But neither of these points matters much compared to this: After losing 60-70% of every graduating class since the mid-90's and before, has the School District actually managed to get diplomas into the hands of almost half of the kids who started high school four years ago?

If so, the district -- and the kids -- deserve a loud, sustained round of applause. This would undeniably be major progress that should give a significant boost to the levy campaign.

So why is this bombshell hiding in the campaign literature, and not at the top of the Plain Dealer's front page?