The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Record high school grad rates in 2017
Officials say 88 percent of students finish in 4 years
NEW HAVEN — State officials announced Monday that Connecticut achieved a record high in its graduation rates in 2017, with 87.9 percent of students graduating high school in four years, according to the state’s data.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and State Department of Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell shared the results at Wilbur Cross High School, crediting the school for improving its four-year graduation rate by 17 points in four years — from 64.3 percent in 2013 to 81.3 percent in 2017.
New Haven schools, as well as other Alliance Districts, or low-performing districts that receive additional resources from the state, outperformed the state average in growth, increasing from 78.3 percent in 2016 to 80.5 percent in 2017. The 2.2 point increase was larger than the state’s average improvement of 0.2 point to its four-year graduation rate.
New Haven’s graduation rate outpaced the Alliance District average, as well, increasing 2.5 points from 2016 to 2017.
Although the 2017 numbers represent a record high graduation rate for the state, the rate of improvement has slowed since 2011, when the state average was 82.7 percent and the Alliance District average was 71.2 percent.
In the three years between 2011 and 2014, the rates grew by 5.3 points and 6.3 points, respectively, but have grown only 0.9 points and 3 points in the years since then.
Wentzell credited the growth to “smart educational strategies” implemented under Malloy such as the Alliance District grant and the Commissioner’s Network school turnaround initiative — Wilbur Cross joined the network in 2013, the second of two New Haven high schools after High School in the Community in 2012.
“Hard work combined with smart strategies gives up great results,” Wentzell said.
Carol Birks, the newly minted superintendent of schools in New Haven, said in her past job as an executive coach she was made familiar with Wilbur Cross High School Principal Edith Johnson, and she believes state and local programs procured with increased funding from the state — such as the ALIVE program, which is designed to address student trauma during school hours, and the addition of a college and career center — have been a difference-maker for that school.
Malloy said his proposal to give more resources to urban and low-performing schools initially was unpopular seven years ago, but he now credits it with making a difference for “thousands of people,” who will make “hundreds of thousands of dollars of income” more for having received high school diplomas.
“The districts where historically less was expected, they have produced greater results,” he said.
Malloy said it was a “conscious decision” to take state aid from districts with less reliance on funding because of their high property tax base and to allocate those funds to Alliance Districts.
Malloy, who has advocated for changing the state’s funding formula even more to level resources between suburban districts and urban districts, is not running for a fourth term. He said if his successor reverses course on the school funding reform he has done, it would be “a gigantic mistake” and “reckless.”
Since the beginning of the current school year, the state has announced cuts to the magnet grant — on which New Haven relies heavily for many of its schools — and has flat-funded the Educational Cost Sharing grant, which also has posed a challenge to the district with its increasing personnel and special education costs.
“Overall, we’ve done a relatively good job,” Malloy said, defending the state’s record of education funding since he took office in 2011.
Additionally, while graduation rates narrowly improved in 2017, nearly three-fourths of all school districts performed worse on the Next Generation Accountability standards than the year before, when the evaluation system was adopted. Many districts performed worse on academic standards and individual student growth, and the overall average was stagnant.
“We think we’re doing substantially better” on providing quality education, Malloy said. “We said from the beginning we’re not just looking for more graduates. We’re seeing a higher level of achievement in schools with higher turnaround.”
Since the SAT was introduced as the state test for high school juniors in 2016, students have posted marginal improvements in math and English, Malloy said.
“That gives us a fairly good measurement,” he said.
Around the time the class of 2017 was graduating, the state legislature also voted to roll back graduation requirements that were approved in 2010 — but never implemented — intended to chase federal Race to the Top funding, as well as broadening certain graduation requirements, the CT Mirror reported.
Although Wentzell, Malloy and Birks credited the turnaround at Wilbur Cross to increased funding in urban districts, Johnson said mettle was a crucial element. She said many of her teachers work up to 14-hour days and district leadership has been helpful to staff development.
“This is an effort of 300plus people,” she said.
Wilbur Cross junior Carlin Eswarakumar said she believes she has seen an effort from school guidance counselors to give individualized attention to students meeting their graduation requirements, running over a checklist of graduation requirements with students. Freshman Johanna Acuna said counselors have attended classes to explain graduation requirements to new students.
Although New Haven’s overall graduation rate improved in 2017, not all high schools graduated a higher rate of its seniors. James Hillhouse High School, which was above the district average in 2016, fell beneath the average, graduating 72.4 percent of its students, eight points less than the year before. Creed High School and the Sound School also saw a decline in graduation rates, although they remained above the district average.
Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, Engineering and Science University Magnet School, Hill Regional Career High School, Metropolitan Business Academy and New Haven Academy all posted improvements in their graduation rates. High School in the Community, which has the lowest graduation rate, also posted the highest gains, from 50 percent in 2016 to 67.9 percent in 2017.
Wentzell said the work around reducing chronic absenteeism — when students miss 10 percent or more of instructional days in a school year — has had a positive impact on graduation rates, especially at Wilbur Cross.
In 2013, the chronic absenteeism rate at the school was 52.4 percent; that year, the school’s graduation rate was 64.3 percent. Four years later, chronic absenteeism was down to 37.4 percent, and the graduation rate rose 17 points.
Within the data, however, is evidence that an achievement gap remains, which is reflected in graduation data. Some 78.1 percent of “high needs” students — a subgroup including English language learners, students eligible for free and reduced price lunch and students in special education — graduated, whereas 97.9 percent of non-high needs students graduated in 2017.
Although the gap between graduation rates for white and black students narrowed since 2011, during which black graduation rates rose 8.9 points, there is still a gap of 12.7 points between the graduation rates of white students — 92.8 percent graduated in four years, compared to 80.1 percent for and black students. The graduation rates of Hispanic students — 77.7 percent in 2017 — reflects a starker racial and ethnic achievement gap: 15.1 points.
Along financial lines, using data for free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, the gap is even wider: 95.5 percent of students ineligible for free and reduced price lunch graduated in four years in 2017, whereas 78.1 percent of free and reduced-price lunch eligible students graduated in the same time, a gap of 17.4 points.
School districts surrounding New Haven also posted improvements to their graduation rates: in one year, East Haven’s graduation rate rose from 73.8 percent to 76.5 percent; North Haven’s graduation rate rose from 94 percent to 95.7 percent; and Hamden’s graduation rate increased 0.1 point, from 87.5 percent to 87.6 percent. Amity Regional High School’s graduation rate improved from 95.9 percent in 2016 to 96.3 percent in 2017.
West Haven was one of the anomalies that saw a decline in its graduation rate in 2017: from 77.4 percent in 2016 to 75.2 percent in 2017.
In Bridgeport, a large, urban Alliance District, the graduation rate jumped 8 points, from 66.5 percent in 2016 to 74.5 percent in 2017. Middletown, also an Alliance District, posted a 5.7 point increase in its graduation rate, from 86.5 percent to 92.2 percent in one year.
In suburban Fairfield and Branford, the 2017 graduation rates were 95.8 percent and 94.2 percent, respectively.