Letter from the Chancellor: Graduation Rates

This is a long letter... I only skimmed the babble. I get the impression though that the graduation rate is seemingly rising because the standards for graduation are relaxing over time. The science standard has diminished to the point where students don't need to know why plants produce fruit... If you don't know yourself, look it up. They're called angiosperms.

Dear Colleagues,

The Mayor and I announced this morning that more students than ever before are graduating from our high schools. In 2007, 55.8% of students graduated from high school in four years (under the State's new methodology). Under the City's traditional methodology, which we're using so we can make comparisons back to the 1980s, the graduation rate was at 62% in 2007. Any way you cut it, we're making progress. Today, because of the hard work of New York City teachers, principals, parents, and others, more than 10,600 more students are graduating each year than when the Mayor took control of the schools. This is a big number, but it’s not just a number. It represents real, human lives—lives that are better because of what’s happening in New York City schools and classrooms.

Congratulations to you for your role in this success. The graduation rate is one of the most important indicators of how well we’re doing. A high school diploma gives our students the opportunities that they need and deserve—and the annual graduation rate report tells us how well we’re succeeding at helping our students meet and exceed standards.

Here are some of the key facts about the graduation rate that the Mayor and I presented this morning:

* Since the State implemented its new graduation rate methodology (for the class of 2005), the graduation rate in New York City has climbed about 6 points. Over the same period, the dropout rate declined by about 3 points.

* Students of all groups—boys, girls, special education students, general education students, and students of all races and ethnicities—made progress between 2006 and 2007.

* City students are also gaining on students in the rest of the State, beginning to narrow the graduation gap that has persisted for decades.

* After four years, our students are continuing to graduate. In 2005, for example, 46.5% of students graduated after four years. But many students needed more time—and eventually graduated. At the five-year mark, 55.7% of students had graduated from high school. And by the six-year mark, the graduation rate was up to 58.5%.

* As more students are graduating, the percentage of our students graduating with Regents and Advanced Regents Diplomas is rising. The percentage of our students graduating with Local Diplomas is falling.

* The gap separating African-American and Latino students from white and Asian students is narrowing. (There's still a long way to go, but we're moving in the right direction.)

* Finally, we are making better progress than the other cities in the Big 5 in helping students graduate. The gap between the City and the rest of the State closed by 4.6 percentage points between 2005 and 2007, while the gap between the Big 4 and the rest of the State increased by 0.3 points.

You can read the press release at http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2008-2009/20080811_grad_rate.htm.

The slide show the Mayor presented is online at http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/CE19A29E-DD2D-4EB4-981A-D3BF6EE4AD40/42079/0811_grad_rate.pdf.

Additional information—including other citywide information and school-by-school breakdowns—is available online at http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/DOEData/GraduationDropoutReports/default.htm.

We should all be very proud of our students and what we’ve accomplished, working together, in recent years. Thank you for all of your hard work, and I look forward to building on this progress in the 2008-09 school year.

Sincerely,
Joel I. Klein