Connecticut High School Graduation Rate Improves

HARTFORD, Conn. — State education officials say Connecticut's high school graduation rate improved in 2010, but nearly 1 in 5 students failed to complete high school within four years.

The state Department of Education released a report Thursday showing that 18.2 percent of students failed to finish high school in four years, down from 20.7 percent in 2009. But whites and Asians continued to graduate at higher rates than black, Hispanic and low-income students.

Four-year graduation rates for whites and Asians were nearly 89 percent last year. The same rates for blacks, Hispanics and low-income students were 69 percent, 64 percent and 63 percent, respectively.

The report also showed suburban schools had much higher graduation rates than urban ones.

State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor wants to redouble efforts to improve the graduation rates.

Comments

[22Keys]

03:59 PM on 01/04/2012

Most Western countries pretend that IQ does not exist. What does that get you? Millions of sad young people struggling in an academic environment that they should not be placed in. It is quite cruel when you think about it. Intelligence (and how some people have it, and others do not) is not very controversial in E. Asian countries.

[Ariel Bonzai]

09:02 AM on 01/04/2012

That's pretty unfair reporting right there. You don't want to include relevant factors and80%vs90% is not shabby since Asians and Whites speak English (it's taught to Asian children right off) and the other group ( blacks, Hispanics and others?) are not as affluent or as familiar with academic English. How can this be a negative?

[P Alan Greene]

09:08 AM on 01/03/2012

I am not sure how "completed in four years" became such a large measure of success. Preferable, yes. But now in PA we consider a student who fails a year, or leaves to flounder for a year in cyberschool, or loses a year to parenthood, and comes back to turn things around and earn his/her diploma albeit in five year-- in PA we consider that student the same as one who drops out and never comes back.

Yes, it's best to do it in four years, but not all students are the same, and a student who does finally successfully complete high school is far more of a success story than one who does not finish at all. The trend, however, is to count them both as a failure of the system.

[Ariel Bonzai]

09:04 AM on 01/04/2012

Skewed stats, I noted this too. Later graduation in summer, Feds, early grads, incarceration, transferrs etc akk heaped in a singl lump to make teachers look bad..

[XV8 Crisis Suit]

01:12 PM on 01/02/2012

If my parents were drug addicts, and if I was too busy worrying about when I was going to eat next, or where I was going to sleep at night, to give a crap about something like Biology or Algebra, then I'd probably drop out too. This strict consequential accountability that education "deformers" tout, that if students drop out then it must be the school's fault, is comical when you look at the home life and environment of many of these students. Tackle the economic inequality that these kids come from, not what the schools are doing, if you want to actually fix this problem.

[iLdoRight]

03:50 PM on 01/01/2012

I saw on TV, perhaps 60 Minutes, where a college, perhaps in Baltimore, where the students stayed to gather as a group and educated each other, sharing what they knew and anyone who was having a problem with something got all the help he or she needed to understand what they were having a problem with. They took the attitude, "You got here and we are going to make sure you get all you came here to get, if you fail to get it, it is Our Fault, we are not going to say "It is your fault". I still think DVDs of all the information on all subjects so a student can review all the information on their own most alert time would be the best answer for having a better educated citizenry.

[lakefront liberal]

09:01 PM on 12/31/2011

It would be interesting to see the statistics between blacks, whites and Hispanics when they control for income. I suspect that middle class blacks & Hispanics have graduation rates that are closer to their white counterparts. I suspect that it would be practically even when controlling for income AND education--meaning that that the graduation rates would be practically the same for a middle class black student and white student whose parents have similar incomes and education levels. The problem is that the average black and Hispanic student's families don't have the same wealth and education attainment as the average white student, which skews these results and really doesn't explain much. Poor rural white students may have the same problems as blacks and Hispanics, but we don't hear much about that. I believe it's an income problem, not a race problem.

That being said, Connecticut is probably one of the better states when it comes to graduation rates. I think 80% is still too low in this technologically driven economy. This only shows how far we're slipping behind other first world countries. If we expect to progress as a country, we can't afford to ignore low graduation rates of the fastest growing populations in the country.

[Kurfco]

09:05 PM on 01/01/2012

That's what we're saying here in California. If we can just get the illegal immigrant parents with a third to sixth grade education up into the middle class, their kids will do much better in school. We're having problems coming up with a solution, though. Any ideas?

Of course kids from poor families with uneducated parents generally do badly in school! I can tell you with certainty that importing more, and announcing that you're a sanctuary state, as Connecticut, has done, will not help graduation rates!

[Ariel Bonzai]

09:07 AM on 01/04/2012

Anecdotally I can say that's right. Aameriicanized students with stable home lives and clear goals excell. Many kids with tenuous home life who live in poverty do too, but they are gifted or determined.

[Grouchland]

01:24 PM on 12/31/2011

Who Cheated?

[cmfrtblebbw]

05:50 PM on 12/30/2011

When one considers ALL the factors, 18% in a state as rich as CT is a little odd. I wonder what the rates are for places like Arkansas ( 32% )...or Mississippi ( 40% ).....and cripes ALABAMA
( 40% )...they can't even count their drop out rate, I bet!

[Soft Robot]

04:53 PM on 12/30/2011

The world needs janitors and Jiffy Lube workers too.

[Grouchland]

01:25 PM on 12/31/2011

F&F
So so SOOOO true. And they are not less intellegent or less capable then our researchers who make far more errors and effect more lives with their errors.

[Ariel Bonzai]

09:09 AM on 01/04/2012

They need diplomas to get hired.

[Soft Robot]

10:23 AM on 01/04/2012

Not when competing against illegal aliens they don't