Geogia's Graduation Rate

The topic that I chose to cover is the graduations  rates in Georgia.  In the article, http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/under-new-formula-georgia-graduation-rate-reset-to/nQSwk/, the author  Nancy Badertscher stated that nearly a third of all Georgia students fail to graduate high school in four years. This has been a growing problem in Georgia seeing how the state has some of the lowest graduation rates in the country. Georgia's 2011 graduation rate has been reset at 67.4 percent, significantly below the old 80 percent mark. Georgia is not only concerned about high school students, but college students as well. In the article, http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/georgia-colleges-graduation-rates-unsatisfactory/nQmRT/ author Laura Diamond states that colleges can no longer enroll students and fail to graduate them. The University System of Georgia enrolls more than 310,000 students but less than 60 percent of them graduate within six years. Diamond goes on to say that starting in the 2012 school year, The Board of Regents are devising a new plan to increase college graduation rates. In the article http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/apr/11/georgia-grad-rate-falls-under-new-measure/ Kevin Hardy talks about the system for calculating graduation rates in 2011. The system included only the students who graduated in four years; students who took longer where forced at obtain their GED or another equivalent  program .

S.C.A.R.F.

The acronym we came up with is SCARF: sponsor, credentials, appearance, relevancy, and factual. A sponsor is usually a person or business who pays a website to run their adds. Credentials are an important factor because they show that the information given is legit and that is comes from a scholarly source. The overall appearance of a website is another key element  to look for when researching . If the site is well put together with accredited listed citations, then the chances are the site is a good source. Relevancy is very important when looking up information. You want to make sure that the given information is relatively current and accurate. Factual ties in with all the other terms. Make sure that the site information comes from a scholarly source. Avoid websites  like Wikipedia where anybody can edit the information.

One thing that I am still confused about is how to find a good secondary source for a paper. I often use Google to search for related topics, but I find that many of the results are not approved academic sources. For example, many professors suggest using Galileo to find a scholarly article, or book but I find this program to be very confusing. Every time I have used it, it gave me articles that were either off topic or ridiculously long. How do I use resources in the library to find approved sources for my papers?

My name is Brittany Davies and I am from Rockdale County. This is my second year and my major is biology; I plan to be a dentist. I enjoy listening to music, dancing, and hanging out with my friends. Some of my favorite artists range from Chris Brown to Adele. Overall, I am a fun, out going person who enjoys to have a good time.