A new report jointly released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University is causing a celebratory stir here in Kentucky (such as here and here).The report says that Kentucky’s public high school graduation rate in 2013 ranked as 10th best in the nation.

This is true, but the statistic is nothing new. It is a rehash of information from the US Department of Education that I blogged about back in January.

And, the cheering may be premature. Click the "Read more" link to find out why.

The concerns I aired in January about the rapid rise in Kentucky’s high school graduation rate still apply. Here is a quick review of some of my January comments:

The state level Kentucky School Report Card for 2012-13 under the “Accountability – Learners – Graduation Rate” tabs shows only 54.1 percent of Kentucky’s public school graduates were either college or career ready in that year. Combining that with the new graduation rate data, we can essentially say that out of every 100 students who entered Kentucky’s high schools four years earlier in the fall of 2009, 86 graduated. But, of those 86 graduates, only 54.1 percent – or only about 47 students – were really adequately prepared for life. Were the other 39 students who got a piece of paper just socially promoted?

So, out of every 100 Kentucky public school students who entered the ninth grade to become the Class of 2013, only 47 completed their education college and/or career ready. Could a more accurate graduation rate for Kentucky’s Class of 2013 really somewhere around just 47 percent? Could it be that the rest of the graduates and their parents are just being fooled by a piece of paper that really doesn’t show what it should?

Furthermore, since there is no standard for graduation among the 50 states, how can we intelligently rank their graduation rates? Do diplomas from Connecticut signify the same accomplishment as those from Arkansas? I don’t think anyone knows. About the closest I can come to some sort of idea is to look at the results from the ACT College Entrance Tests for the states that test all their graduates. I have done this before in this blog and you can see the latest results here.

Here is a summary from that blog of Kentucky’s ACT Benchmark Score performance for white high school graduates in 2014 among the 12 states that tested all graduates in that year:

• ENGLISH: Kentucky ranks second from the bottom among the 12 states that tested all graduates in 2014 and lost ground from its rank in 2013.

• MATHEMATICS: Kentucky ranks second from the bottom and made no relative improvement in ranking from 2013.

• READING: Kentucky ranks second from the bottom but did improve one slot from its performance in 2013.

• SCIENCE: Kentucky ranks second from the bottom and made no relative improvement from 2013.

• STUDENTS WHO MET BENCHMARK SCORES ACROSS ALL FOUR SUBJECTS: Kentucky ranks second from the bottom and made no relative improvement from 2013.

Certainly, the data indicate Kentucky’s education system isn’t as rigorous as most other states that test all their students with the ACT. Could it be that our diploma requirements are a little wanting, as well?