HARTFORD — The city’s high school graduation rate reached 71 percent in 2013, still behind the state average but more than double the rate since Hartford began its education reform efforts nearly eight years ago, city and school officials said Wednesday.
Mayor Pedro Segarra called the most recent calculation, which includes six magnet schools that enroll a mix of suburban and city students, a “landmark high.”
When Segarra became a city council member in 2006, Hartford’s new superintendent at the time determined that the district’s true graduation rate — based on a four-year cohort of students that started together as freshmen — was 29 percent, not the 89 percent annual graduation rate that had been reported to the state.
The old rate was “atrocious,” Segarra said. School officials pointed out that the percentage of Hartford students graduating has “reversed itself,” and that 29 percent now represents the students who do not receive a high school diploma in four years.
[Get Your Local Hartford News On Facebook: Click Here]
Across 14 high schools, 1,009 students received their diplomas as part of the Class of 2013, according to state and district data released Wednesday. The school system’s magnet schools all posted graduation rates of 93 percent or higher, helping the overall Hartford rate.
The state Department of Education did not have a specific breakdown of the percentage of Hartford resident-students who graduated. The city school system also did not immediately have that data, said David Medina, the schools’ spokesman.
The lowest Hartford school graduation rate was 56 percent at Weaver High School’s Culinary Arts Academy. Bulkeley High School and Hartford Public High’s Law and Government Academy had rates of nearly 72 percent, the highest for the city’s non-magnet schools.
Statewide, the four-year graduation rate was 85.5 percent in 2013, an uptick of 0.7 percentage points, according to the state. The rate is based on a national formula that tracks students who enter high school as ninth-graders and compares that group to the number of students who graduate within four years.
The National Governors Association formula, which Connecticut began using in 2010 when it calculated a 79 percent graduation rate for the Class of 2009, also considers students who transfer in and out of schools during that four-year period.
Bridgeport’s graduation rate was 67.3 percent in 2013, for example. In the Farmington Valley, 97.3 percent of Simsbury students received their diploma in four years.
Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, speaking during a news conference Wednesday with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, said the “graduation gap” between black and white students in the state had narrowed by 4.3 percentage points since 2010.
The graduation rate for white students was 91.4 percent in 2013, nearly flat compared to 2012, while the rate for black students was 75.7 percent, an increase of 2.7 percentage points.
Among Hispanic students in Connecticut, 70.2 percent graduated in four years — a slight growth of 1.6 percentage points from 2012, but still an indicator of the long-standing achievement gap between minority students and their white peers.
Students learning English, those who receive special education services, and the poor are most vulnerable to dropping out of high school, state data show.
More than a third of students identified as English language learners did not graduate in four years. For special education students, the 2013 cohort graduation rate was 64.7 percent.
Students who are eligible to receive free school lunches, which the state considers an indicator of low income, graduated at a rate of 68.6 percent — up 2 percentage points from the 2012 cohort. However, 93.3 percent of wealthier students received their diplomas as part of the Class of 2013.
“We’re pleased that there’s been some progress, but cannot rest on our laurels … because there remains a substantial gap for English language learners, for African-American students, for students in poverty and a variety of categories of students,” said Pryor, who noted the extra state funding being provided to low-performing “alliance” districts and schools in the Commissioner’s Network.
“We must make more progress,” Pryor said.
For the first time, the state also released a five-year graduation rate of 87.5 percent for students who started their freshman year in 2008 and received their diploma by 2013. State education officials said the extra year allowed an additional 1,185 students — or 2.7 percent from the 2012 cohort — to graduate from high school, including English language learners and students with special needs.
The state released the 2013 graduation data during a news conference at High School Inc., one of Hartford’s smaller, career-oriented academies that has been a staple, first under former Superintendent Steven Adamowski, who joined the district in 2006, and then under his successor, Christina Kishimoto, whose three-year tenure as superintendent ends in late June.
At High School Inc., a finance and insurance academy in downtown that will be converted to a magnet program next school year, 106 students received their diplomas as part of the 2013 cohort — a graduation rate of 71 percent, up from about 52 percent in 2012.
Vinecia Thaxter, 17, of Hartford, said she began attending the academy as a sophomore when she moved back to Connecticut from Maine. At first, she said, she was unhappy to attend a “trade” school focused on business, when her interest is really in psychology.
But Thaxter became immersed in school activities and said she understands why more students are graduating, at least at High School Inc.
“The classes are interesting and the teachers are hilarious,” said Thaxter, a graduating senior who plans to attend UConn. “They are very focused on trying to get all of us out of here and into the world. I think all of the students in the school have at least one teacher they can go to and talk to.”
Shaneisha Jones, the school’s salutatorian, agreed that teachers are supportive.
“Very open and honest,” Jones, 17, said after the news conference. “We all have the potential to be on the same page. It’s a matter of who wants it or not.”
Overall, the district’s graduation rate has improved from 57 percent in 2010 to 63 percent in 2011, 65 percent in 2012 and the latest rate of 71 percent. Bulkeley High School had 126 four-year graduates in 2013, the highest number in Hartford.
Kishimoto, who is on vacation through the end of June, was not at Wednesday’s announcement.
Jacqueline Jacoby, the district’s interim leader, attributed the graduation gains to several factors, including the specialized academies that are smaller than traditional high schools, with the idea of providing more attention to students; parent engagement; “student success centers,” such as one at Bulkeley that offers “blended learning” courses where some work is done online; and other credit-recovery programs.
Segarra said his goal is for all Hartford public school students to receive a high school diploma, for the benefit of their own lives and for the economy.
“The future of this city, the future of our state lies in our ability to provide young, capable men and women to fill the ranks” of area businesses and industries, Segarra said. “We still have a ways to go.”