Kentucky shows improvement recently in high school graduation rates

WFPL and others are reporting about a new study from America’s Promise Alliance and several other organizations released Monday on education performance around the country.

The study shows that Kentucky and 11 other states contributed significantly to the overall increase in the national average high school graduation rate between 2002 and 2009. WFPL says Kentucky’s graduation rate increased from 69.2 to 77.6 percent between those years while nationwide the overall average rate improved 3.5 points.

While Kentucky’s recent graduation rate trend is important, the results need to be viewed in perspective.

This graph shows Kentucky’s and the nation’s high school graduation rates since the implementation of KERA.

AFGR to 2008-09 From NCES

Notice that even Kentucky’s latest available graduation rate for 2008-09 is somewhat lower than the peak rate of 79.2, which was achieved back in the 1993-94 school year. In those early days of KERA, the reform had not been around long enough to really impact our high school trends very much. So, the 1993-94 and earlier data is more like a pre-KERA trend.

After 1993-94, Kentucky’s high school graduation rates started a serious decline that flattened out around 1999-2000 and stayed flat for several more years before starting to improve again. Notably, the improvement started as No Child Left Behind added high school graduation rates to its accountability requirements.

Notice that by only examining graduation rates from 2002 to 2009, the new report happens to pick up only Kentucky’s recent trend information, which is certainly improving but still has a way to go to match what happened in the early 1990s.The new America’s Promise Alliance report has more information worth discussion, and I’ll cover that in future blogs.

Tech Note: I assembled the graph using AFGR data from the following sources:

Data to 2006-07, Digest of Education Statistics 2008, Table 1062006-07: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "NCES Common Core of Data State Dropout and Completion Data File," School Year 2006–07, Version 1a.

2007-08: NCES, Digest of Education Statistics 2010: Table 112,2008-09: NCES: Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2008–09 First Look, NCES 2011-312