Muscogee County sets record as 2020 Georgia high school graduation rates are released
The Muscogee School County District has achieved its highest graduation rate since the state started using its current calculation eight years ago, according to the data released Tuesday by the Georgia Department of Education.
MCSD’s 2020 high school graduation rate of 89.4% is 3.3 points better than 2019, when the district broke its streak of six straight years of improvement on this indicator of how well schools educate their students.
MCSD surpassed the state average for the eighth straight year and the national average for the sixth straight year. Georgia’s 2020 graduation rate is 83.8%. The most recent United States graduation rate for public high schools is 85% in 2018, according to a May 2020 report by the National Center for Education Statistics.
“We applaud our schools, district support teams, parents and students for their hard work and dedication that contributed to the steady increase of our graduation rates, leading to this year’s historic high rate,” MCSD superintendent David Lewis said in a news release. “This improvement is attributed to more intentional identification of students as early as middle school who are not on track to graduate on time. We then provide them with additional support, resources and encouragement toward attaining this important educational milestone.”
The current formula for the graduation rate, required by the U.S. Department of Education, is called the four-year adjusted cohort rate. That measures the percentage of students who graduate from high school within four years.
Out of MCSD’s nine high schools, six improved their graduation rate and one maintained it compared to last year, seven surpassed the state and national averages, and three (Carver, Jordan and Shaw) notched their highest four-year cohort graduation rate.
Here are the graduation rates for each MCSD high school compared to last year:
- Columbus 100, remained the same.
- Rainey-McCullers 100, first graduating class.
- Northside 93.5, decreased by 0.9.
- Carver 92.3, increased by 3.8.
- Shaw 91.4, increased by 3.5.
- Hardaway 89.6, increased by 0.3.
- Kendrick 85.4, increased by 2.8.
- Spencer 83, increased by 6.4.
- Jordan 81.1, increased by 11.9.
“We are encouraged and energized by these results and remain committed to our ultimate goal to ensure 100 percent of our students achieve full-option graduation,” Lewis said. “Whether it is further study at a four-year or two-year institution, training, the workforce or military service, we want our students to be equipped for their choice.”
Other local districts
Compared to last year, Harris County’s graduation rate decreased by 4.1 points to 89.2%, and Chattahoochee County’s increased by 11.6 points to 88.3%.
“We are very pleased that we are outperforming the state average this year,” ChattCo superintendent Kristie Brooks told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email. “Even more, we are pleased that our commitment set forth in our strategic plan is coming to fruition. We believe it is imperative that every child graduate high school in a timely manner and that each child is prepared to become a productive contributor to society.”
Brooks credits “the high-quality employees of ChattCo and the support of our families. Education is the great equalizer for all of us, and we take our work in instruction, student supports and data collection very seriously.”
To continue the improvement, Brooks said, “we will remain focused on using our teachers as advisors and providing individual supports to meet each student’s needs. We are extremely blessed to have a school community beginning with our daycare and pre-K that realizes graduation is the work of all of us as we support our families in making education a priority.”
Dave Dennie, the Harris County School District’s assistant superintendent for instruction, told the L-E in an email, “We believe our challenge — as a district — is tracking where students who withdraw from Harris County High School end up. Incorrectly coding this information can negatively impact the four- and five-year graduation rate.”
Despite the decline this year in Harris County’s graduation rate, Dennie noted HCSD still is “well above the state average.”
“Our continued high graduation rate can be attributed to both the hard work and dedication of the high school faculty, staff and students and the diversity and number of programs and activities in which our students are involved,” he said.
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 2:27 PM.
