Tennessee graduation rates down slightly
Tennessee’s graduation rates nearly decade-long climb lost ground during the 2019-20 school year amid a turbulent school year thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 89.6% of public high school seniors earned their diplomas at the end of the 2019-20 school year, a slight dip from the 89.7% rate set during the 201819 school year.
Though the rate is down by one-tenth of a percentage point this year, the state has seen a steady increase since changes were made in 2011. Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn lauded last year’s record-high rate set by the Class of 2019 and said at the time she believed the state could top results.
With most schools across the state closing by April because of the pandemic, many high school seniors missed the last months of the school year, but the state relaxed graduation requirements to ensure seniors weren’t negatively impacted by the sudden disruption to the school year.
In April, the State Board of Education reduced the number of required credits for graduation from 22 to 20 and waived the requirement that seniors take the ACT or SAT before finishing high school.
The data released by the Tennessee Department of education with little fanfare this week is among the first measurable academic information published since COVID-19 disrupted schooling statewide.
Among graduating seniors, white students raised their graduation from 92.7% in 2019 to 93.2% in 2020, but the rate for Black students fell from 83.5% to 83% this year — more than ten percentage points below their white peers. The rate for Hispanic students fell even further behind their peers from 84.1% in 2019 to 82.4% this year.
Most alarming for some education watchdogs is the graduation rate of English language learners. The percentage of students learning English, many of them new to the country, decreased by more than 3 percentage points from 71.9% in 2019 to 68.6% in 2020.
“Our great fear is this is a beginning of a regression by the state. We cannot afford to go backwards now in this critical juncture in education. We had made many exemptions, we thought the grad rate would move the other way this year,” said J.C. Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville. “It makes me wonder what it would be like if we didn’t make exemptions.”
The number of homeless students graduating also decreased from 77.5% in 2019 to 76.6% this year.
Of the state’s largest school districts, only one saw an increase. Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga saw its graduation rate rise to 87% from 86.9% in 2019.
Shelby County Schools saw a decrease from 79.3% in 2019 to only 77.7% of seniors graduating in 2020.
Metro Nashville Public Schools’ decline mirrored the state’s, with the graduation rate falling one-tenth of a percentage point from 82.4% in 2019 to 82.3% this year.
In Knox County, 91% of seniors graduated this year, down from 91.2% in 2019.
Meghan Mangrum covers education in Nashville for the USA TODAY NETWORK — Tennessee.