High school graduation rate rises slightly

The increase from 2016 to 2017 was small, but there's been an 11.7 percentage point jump since five years ago.

Kingston High School’s graduation rate has risen by a small amount.

The percentage of the 2016-17 senior class that graduated last month was 83.7 percent, up from the 83.4 percent rate of the previous year’s senior class in June 2016.

The Class of 2017 rate is expected to reach 84.5 percent when some students who didn’t complete their requirements by June receive diplomas at the end of the current summer session.

School district Superintendent Paul Padalino said the goal from year to year is “having a one point increase in our graduation rate.” And on average, the gains have been far better than that: The rate has jumped 11.7 percentage points since it stood at 72 percent five years ago.

Padalino said the district continues to work to improve the graduation rates among student groups that traditionally have struggled.

“Where we saw positive movement is looking at our black students,” he said. “Five years ago we were at 57.4 percent, this year we were at 78.9 percent.”

There were similar gains among Hispanic students, for whom this year’s graduation rates 74.3, which is 17.2 percentage points higher than five years ago.

Padalino said the district also is paying close attention to the percentages of student who pass the state Regents exams. He noted that the passing rates declines this past year in seven of 10 Regents courses but said there also was an increase in the percentage of students demonstrating a mastery of the subjects.

As an example, he said the 73.1 percent pass rate on the physics Regents was 3.5 percentage points lower than a year earlier but that there was a 20.6-point increase in the percentage of students who received high scores on the test.

“That’s a piece of data that we need to know what’s that’s all about,” the superintendent said. “Was it a particularly difficult test? Did we have issues as far as instruction are concerned?”

Separately, Padalino said a district goal of reducing the percentage of students classified as having disabilities might need some finetuning.

“Some of the things we’re learning is we need to shrink our goal and extend our time period to do that,” he said at a recent Board of Education meeting. “Increasing attendance and reducing classification rate in students is not something you do in 10 months.”

Padalino said the disabilities rate has held steady at 23 percent for the past two school years.