What about a student who earns a GED? Is a student who moves and graduates from school in another state a Utah dropout?

For years, educators have known that calculating high school graduation rates is much more complex than counting who accepts a diploma and who does not. Making matters even more confusing, states often calculate graduation rates differently, making comparisons difficult.

That, however, is likely to change soon. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced Tuesday she will work in coming weeks to ensure all states use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school on time.

"One reason that the high school dropout crisis is known as the 'silent epidemic' is that the problem is frequently masked or minimized by inconsistent and opaque data-reporting systems," Spellings said.

A report released Tuesday by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center said only about 70 percent of students nationwide graduate from high school. In Utah, 83 percent of 12th-graders graduated in 2005-2006, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the State Office of Education. Utah used a formula that took the number of graduates as well as the number of dropouts into account.

Several recent Education Week reports also have pegged Utah's graduation rate at nearly 84 percent.

Judy Park, associate state schools superintendent, said it is too early to judge whether Spellings' decision will be a good one for Utah. The U.S. Department of Education did not release any details Tuesday explaining how or when the changes will take place.

"We're just focused around trying to make sure the data is the most accurate," Park said.

Utah now counts students who complete high school but fail the exit exam, after taking it at least three times, as graduates, Park said. The state does not, however, count as graduates dropouts who earn GEDs. And sometimes students who move out of state might be counted as dropouts because their Utah schools lose track of where they have gone, she said.

"There are so many different ways to calculate it that people get confused," Park said.

The state has not yet released graduation rates for 2006-2007, but those will be more accurate than ever, Park said. That's because the state can now use an identification number assigned to every student to keep track of where they go.

"The important thing is getting a hold of the kids who aren't graduating," said Mark Peterson, spokesman for the Utah State Office of Education.

The state education office is now working on ways to keep more students from dropping out. They are working to help establish intervention programs at middle schools and high schools and to clarify the way data about dropouts is collected, among other things.