Students pose for photos before Arvada West High Schools graduation ceremony at the Coors Events Center on the Campus of the University of Colorado on May 22, 2013 in Boulder.
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The high school drop out rate across Colorado increased last year for the first time in eight years.
Massachusetts’ four-year high school graduation rates climbed for the ninth year in a row, with some of the largest gains in such groups as black females, Hispanic students and students from low-income families, the state education department announced Thursday. “Those are our kids and they have no chance in life unless we can graduate them from high school”.
Only 1.4 percent of students in the Cherry Creek School District, which encompasses much of south Aurora, dropped out of school previous year, according to CDE.
“We have too many students who graduate from high school, but are not prepared for success after high school”, said Chester.
The Denver Post reports (http://dpo.st/1UfmszD ) that state data released Thursday shows public schools statewide graduated 77.3 percent of students in the spring of 2015.
The state’s annual dropout rate also declined to 1.9 percent in 2014-2015, dipping to the lowest overall rate in more than three decades.
A few school districts, including those in Littleton, Brighton and Englewood, saw drops in the graduation rate from last year’s numbers.
The Colorado Department of Education’s director of dropout prevention, Judith Martinez, says the department will further examine the data in coming weeks to see what might have caused the increase.
“Eighth to ninth grade transitions and focus on reducing the number of course failures in ninth grade are really strategies that are leading to improvement”, she said. Holyoke’s graduation rate moved up almost 2 percentage points to 62 percent. Also the graduation rate for African-American women is now higher than 80%. By another measure – high school completion rate, which takes into account students who received GEDs or “non-diploma” completion certificates – Colorado students took steps backward.
Chester said there’s still work to be done.
“It’s not just that they graduate, but that they are successful when they leave”, said school principal Theresa Mccorquodale.
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As with many measures of student achievement, graduation rates vary greatly by district and have a strong correlation to the racial and socioeconomic backgrounds of their student makeups.
