Newsrooom

Friday, January 20, 2012

Denver -Denver Public Schools continues to show strong growth in its four-year "on-time" graduation rate, posting a 4.3-point gain and graduating 175 more students last spring over the previous year, according to data released today by the Colorado Department of Education. This brings the district's four-year rate from 51.8% to 56.1%. 

Coupled with last year's 5.4-point gain, DPS's four-year graduation rate has increased by nearly 10 points, which means about 400 more students have graduated from high school on time in the past two years. 

"This is very encouraging news for our community, and a testament to the work of our students, teachers, and school leaders," DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said. "Graduating students ready for success in college and career is our most important measure. I am thrilled to see such a large increase over the past two years. Nevertheless, there's still much more improvement needed. We need to make sure that the number of our graduates continues to climb." 

Last year, the CDE revised the graduation-rate calculation, including in the calculation only those students who graduated "on time"--within four years of entering high school. 

The district's 10-point increase over two years is the fastest rate of growth of any of the 20 largest school districts in Colorado.   

DPS also has a significant number of students who graduate in five years instead of four years.  Many Denver high school students are on a designed five-year program that includes concurrent enrollment in college-level classes or additional support in English fluency. When accounting for students who took an extra year to graduate, the five-year graduation rate is 58.5%. For non-alternative high schools only, the five-year rate is 75.4%. 

"We are committed to giving all of our students the support they need to graduate, and we expect hundreds more students from this cohort will graduate this spring, leading to a significantly higher five-year graduation rate this year," Boasberg said. 

In all, eight DPS non-alternative high schools showed improvements of more than 5 percentage points in their on-time rates. Most striking were the dramatic improvements at Abraham Lincoln High School, which increased its graduation rate by 11.7 percentage points, up to 63.5%. Over the past two years, Lincoln has increased the number of its four-year graduates from 151 students to 299 students. In addition, each in their second year of graduating classes, both Bruce Randolph 6-12 School and Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College posted strong graduation rates for the second year in a row - 87.1% and 91.5% respectively. 

The following DPS schools saw on-time graduation rates above 75%: 

School                                                                  On-Time Grad Rate

Denver School of the Arts                                      97.5%

Martin Luther King Jr. Early College                       91.5%

Denver Center for International Studies                90.0%

East High School                                                   87.6%

Bruce Randolph 6-12 School                                  87.1%

George Washington High School                            82.3%

Fred Thomas Career Education Center (CEC)         80.4%

DSST: Stapleton                                                    80.0%

Thomas Jefferson High School                               78.3%

John F Kennedy High School                                 77.4%  

Alternative schools in DPS posted a 13 percent increase in the number of students who graduated or completed high school within five years. For example, Justice High School and P.R.E.P. Center each increased their rates by about 45 percentage points. Students who are counted in the completion rate earn either a diploma or a GED. 

Alternative schools, as defined by the School Performance Framework, are tailored to meet the needs of students who have had difficulty connecting successfully to educational pathways in the traditional settings or who have dropped out. They provide programs for students who may need intensive academic, attendance, behavioral and/or emotional support. The district's alternative schools are a critical resource for the metro region, with nearly half of the students who attend the alternative programs coming from other neighboring school districts from which they have transferred or dropped out.  DPS has a greater percent of students in alternative school (intensive and multiple pathways) settings than any other metro district. 

In the past two years, DPS opened three multiple pathways centers -- Summit Academy in Southwest Denver, Vista Academy in Far Northeast Denver and the Denver Center for 21^st Century Learning in Central Denver-to help provide more targeted, personalized support to help put more students on the path to graduation and success in college and career.