@article{Edwards_Mindrila_2019, title={Improving graduation rates: Legitimate practices and gaming strategies}, volume={27}, url={https://epaa.asu.edu/index.php/epaa/article/view/4222}, DOI={10.14507/epaa.27.4222}, abstractNote={<p class="ABKW">Accountability pressures faced by teachers and leaders may lead well-intentioned educators to engage in strategic reporting and operational practices to increase test scores, graduation rates, and other indicators of student success. Such practices are referred to as <em>gaming behaviors</em>. School district personnel attending a Georgia educational conference (<em>N</em>=146) reported a significant prevalence of two such practices – purging data for students enrolled for a short period of time and fabricating withdrawal forms in case of audit. Exploratory factor analysis yielded three categories of strategies employed by school districts to improve reported graduation rates: a) practices that directly contradict the rules governing ethical reporting of data (Factor1); b) legitimate educational practices aiming to enhance student learning (Factor2); and c) possible gaming strategies aiming to exclude low performing students from the computation of graduation rates (Factor3). Latent profile analysis distinguished a) a group with average scores on all factors (<em>N</em>=120); and b) a group with significantly higher scores on Factor1 and Factor3 (<em>N</em>=26). The second group included a significantly larger proportion of individuals from districts with 5,000 – 10,000 students; districts of this size may have the expertise in-house to understand calculations and take strategic action with their data reporting practices.</p>}, journal={Education Policy Analysis Archives}, author={Edwards, Noralee R. and Mindrila, Diana L.}, year={2019}, month={Apr.}, pages={41} }