Graduation Rate Made Little Progress, State Says

The high school graduation rate in New York state barely budged last year, inching up just half a percentage point, according to data released Wednesday by the New York state Education Department. According to the department, 80.2 percent of public school students graduated on time.

The data was based on the 207,000 students who entered ninth grade in 2013.

New York has made a series of changes to its graduation requirements in recent years, which make it difficult to judge whether schools are improving. For example, the state said that instead of passing five Regents exams, students could graduate by passing four of them and earning a credential that demonstrates they are qualified for entry-level employment. That change was in place for the 2016 graduating class, but the class of 2017 had more opportunity to use the alternative path to graduation. School districts reported that 9,900 students graduated using alternative requirements last year.

In New York City, 71.1 percent of students graduated on time last year, up from 70 percent the year before. The city said that across every borough and ethnicity, the graduation rate rose and the dropout rate declined. The dropout rate citywide last year was 7.8 percent, which the city said was the lowest on record.

Students elsewhere, particularly in districts with large numbers of low-income families, did not do as well. In Rochester, just over half of all students graduated on time last year. And in Hempstead, a district on Long Island that serves mostly black and Hispanic students, and has been put on notice by the state Education Department that it must improve, just 37 percent of students graduated on time in 2017. That figure was down from the already abysmal 48 percent the year before.

In the state’s wealthier districts, the picture was starkly different. Almost 95 percent of students in districts with a high level of resources graduated on time.

Vast inequalities also persisted between different groups of students. Statewide, 89 percent of white students graduated on time last year, while just 68.4 percent of Hispanic students and 69.3 percent of black students did. Those gaps narrowed slightly from the prior year, but they remained stubbornly wide.

The disadvantages of students learning English were also on display. Students who were still learning English graduated at a rate of just 26.6 percent and their dropout rate actually increased, from 28 percent in 2016 to 29.7 percent in 2017. Elia said that districts with a lot of poorly performing students learning English would be required to show the state they were doing more to help them. Students who had come into school not speaking English and had mastered the language graduated at a rate of 84.4 percent.

The 80.2 percent overall graduation rate represents students who finished their schooling in June. For those who graduated in August, after catching up on credits, the statewide rate was 82.1 percent.