A new study out today by Education Week researchers has found that the on-time graduation rate for D.C. public school students fell to an appalling 48.8 percent in 2006, a drop of more than eight percentage points from the previous year. In other words, in 2006, more D.C. students had dropped out of high school than graduated.
The study looks at national graduation data from 1996-2006, the most recent years available, and calculates the percentage of students who graduate from high school within four years of entering 9th grade. It does not include data from public charter schools. The national high school graduation rate is 69.2 percent, which is itself pretty terrible. State by state comparisons can be viewed here.
The Post reports that DCPS has, “declined to comment on the study’s graduation numbers, saying that it was D.C. school policy not to discuss performance data from the period before Chancellor Michelle Rhee took office in 2007.” That’s a remarkably unhelpful response — and unnecessarily so, considering we immediately thought of two points they could have made in their own defense. First, graduation rates tell us little about what students are actually learning or how prepared they are for work or college. This is particularly true in districts like D.C., which has long suffered from a culture of social promotion. Secondly, this data is three years old, and much has happened in DCPS since it was collected. In particular, one would hope that improved social services for working students and student parents and increased academic interventions will have some impact in supporting more D.C. students through 12th grade.
UPDATE: Jennifer Calloway from the Office of the Chancellor just emailed us some updated information: “This year 14 out of 17 high schools increased their graduation rates, and cumulatively the graduation rate increased from 67.9% to 69.72%. The 1+% percentage increase equated to nearly 200 more students graduating in 2008 than in 2007.” Additionally, Calloway points out that DCPS recently created the Office of Youth Engagement, which houses alternative learning programs and supports students who are chronically truant or who are otherwise at risk of dropping out.
