Report shows rise in Ky.’s graduation rate

By Art Jester

ajester@herald-leader.com

A new national report shows that 71.5 percent of Kentucky’s high school students graduate on time, four years after they enroll in ninth grade.

Kentucky’s high school graduation rate ranks 29th nationally and is slightly ahead of the national average of 70.6 percent, according to Education Week, a national news publication for K-12, and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. The report uses data from the class of 2005, the most recent year available.

Kentucky’s five-year trend also is encouraging. The 2005 rate is up 6.2 percentage points from the state’s 2001 graduation rate: 65.3 percent.

The report’s projection nationwide is that 1.23 million, or almost 30 percent of the class of 2008, will fail to get a diploma this spring with their classmates. The class started with about 4.18 million, and four years later, about 2.95 are graduating.

Christopher B. Swanson, director of the EPE Research Center, said in a news release that “many states face severe challenges” with their graduation rates.

“This crisis disproportionately strikes poor, minority and urban youths,” Swanson said. “With the graduation rate rising less than one percentage point annually in recent years, we still have much work to do.”

The findings appear in Diplomas Count 2008: School to College: Can P-16 Council Ease the Transition?, a project supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of Seattle.

For Kentucky’s high school class of 2008, the report projects that: • The projected number of graduates this year is 40,501, or 71.5 percent of the 56,661 who enrolled in 9th grade in 2004-2005. • Over the last four years, Kentucky lost 16,160, or 28.5 percent, of those who entered high school but did not earn a diploma. • Seen another way, Kentucky loses 90 high school students every school day.

The nation loses 6,829 high school students each school day, the report says.

For the first time, Diplomas Count provided the graduation rate for each congressional district. In Kentucky, the rates by district and member of Congress are:

1st (Ed Whitfield-R, Hopkinsville), 73.3 percent; 2nd (Ron Lewis-R, Cecilia), 74.8; 3rd (John Yarmuth-D, Louisville), 62.5; 4th (Geoff Davis, R-Hebron), 73.5; 5th (Hal Rogers-R, Somerset), 68; and 6th, which includes Fayette County, (Ben Chandler, D-Versailles), 70.3.

For 2005, Kentucky’s graduation rates by gender, race and ethnic group are: male, 66.2 percent; female, 76; white, 72.4; black, 58.2; Native American, 21.8; Asian, 82; and Hispanic, 49.4.

The 2005 graduation rates for the top five states were: New Jersey, 83.3 percent; Iowa, 82.8; Wisconsin, 80.5; Pennsylvania, 80.4; and Vermont, 80.2.

The bottom five in 2005 are: District of Columbia, 57.6 percent; South Carolina, 55.6; Louisiana, 54.7; New Mexico, 54.1; and Nevada, 45.4.

View the full report at http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2008/06/05/index.html.

Reach Art Jester at (859) 231-3489 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3489.