A Bush administration proposal to require that all states use the same formula to calculate high school graduation rates is winning applause from education experts who say it will shed light on the nation's dropout problem. The proposed regulation is among several the U.S. DOE administration introduced in April. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she is using regulatory power to tweak the No Child Left Behind law because efforts in Congress to overhaul it have stalled.

The 2002 law requires schools and states to report graduation rates, but states have been criticized for understating the number of students who don't receive a diploma. Former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, said a uniform formula would give parents, educators and policymakers a better picture of student performance.

The proposal, likely to take effect by year's end, would require all states by 2013 to use a formula the nation's governors endorsed in 2005. High schools, school systems and states would be required to make progress toward a state-determined graduation rate goal. The graduation rate among subsets of students — including those in poverty, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities — also would have to improve.

Spellings would also require states to:

• Post the performance of students on national reading and math tests alongside state test scores;
• Prove that the data they use to rate school performance do not exclude too many test scores from students who belong to minority groups; and
• Ensure that plans to restructure chronically low-performing schools are sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive.

The rules would also require schools to give parents better information about a key requirement of the law: access to government-funded tutoring or the chance to transfer to a school with better test scores. Final regulations are expected to be published in November after a public comment period.