Danbury High graduation rates up

Achievement gap narrows among low-income, special education, minority students

DANBURY — The achievement gap is slowly shrinking at Danbury High School as graduation rates among low-income, special education and minority students continue to trend upward.

Although the graduation rates at DHS still lag behind the state average, the largest high school in Connecticut has increased its total graduation rate by more than 4 percentage points over the past five years, according to a new district analysis of graduation data.

The improvements are even bigger for those student subgroups normally at the bottom end of the achievement gap, who are becoming an increasingly large portion of the high school as Danbury’s demographics continue to dramatically shift.

The graduation rate among Hispanic and Latino students — nearly half of the almost 3,100 member DHS student body — has increased 13 percent since the 2012-13 school year to 74.2 percent in 2018.

“We would love 100 percent of our students to pass in four years and we’re working very hard with that goal in mind, but we have had some things that impacted that,” DHS Principal Dan Donovan said. “Raising graduation requirements, shifting our expectations for all students ... we’ve had a pretty significant shift in the demographics of our students.

“With that, we not only maintained our graduation rate, but we’ve improved it and we’re also closing the achievement gap,” he said. “While our total’s only gone up by minimal amounts, these numbers

have grown dramatically.”

Last year, two-thirds of DHS special education students, who represent about 13 percent of the school, graduated on time compared to half of the special education students in 2012-13, according to the data.

Graduation rates have increased by 9 percent for black students over that same time period and 7 percent for students from low-income households who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

Exactly 83 percent of all Danbury High School seniors graduated last May, though that number is expected to remain below the statewide average, which is not yet available for 2017-18 but has hovered at or just above 87 percent over the past four years.

The graduation rates do not neatly increase steadily year over year — sometimes they jump several percentage points for one class only to drop the next — which reflects how each graduating cohort has different students with different needs, Donovan said.

But the overall increase across several classes illustrates teachers are making meaningful improvements even as the school rapidly expands and teaches more challenged students, he said.

Ten years ago, for example, only 23 percent of students came from lowincome homes and qualified for free or reducedprice lunch.

Today, 58 percent of DHS students qualify.

“The student body had drastically changed, but we’ve still been able to improve our rates,” Donovan said. “That’s why we see this as a positive result, even though, of course, I want every student to graduate.”

Not captured in that typical graduation rate is the additional 7 percent of students who graduate within six years, many of whom are English-language learners who arrived at DHS with little formal education, and special education students, Associate Principal Meghan Martins said.

The school is expanding its after-school courses and adding a free summer English course for nonnative speakers to help those students to graduate within four years, she said.

Importantly, 87 percent of DHS graduates who enrolled in college completed their freshman year and returned for their sophomore year, she said. That is 13 percent higher than the national average.

Superintendent Sal Pascarella said the latest rates show the district is on the right track.

“All of those things you allowed us to work on have started to pay off,” he told the school board on Wednesday night. “The kids are stepping up to the plate as they can, as they have the abilities, even when they have deficiencies. We clearly have work to do, particularly in those areas or subgroups of our students.”