Oregon’s black graduation rate lowest in U.S.

Wed., June 21, 2006

Julia Silverman Associated Press

Montana grad rate 15th in U.S.

» The Editorial Projects in Education research center reported Tuesday that nearly 25 percent of Montana's students did not earn a high school diploma in 2003. The report puts the state's graduation rate far lower than some previous estimates.

» The study shows Montana's overall graduation rate was 76 percent in 2002-03, the most recent school year for which data were available, ranking the state 15th in the country. Nationally, 70 percent of students graduated that year.

» Office of Public Instruction figures show an 84 percent state graduation rate in 2002-03, and other education groups have put the state at 80 percent or higher.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Linda McCulloch attributed the discrepancy to differences in the way graduation rates are calculated.

Associated Press

PORTLAND – Just 25 percent of African American students in Oregon will graduate from high school, by far the lowest rate in the nation, according to a new survey released Tuesday by an education research group.

The national average graduation rate for black students is 51.6 percent, according to the study by Editorial Projects in Education, the Maryland-based nonprofit organization that publishes the influential newspaper Education Week. The next-lowest state after Oregon was Michigan, where the African American student graduation rate is 31.6 percent, according to the report.

Overall, Oregon’s graduation rate is 69 percent, according to the group’s calculations, about the national average.

That’s well below the state’s official figure of about 81 percent. The two figures are actually measuring different student groups, said Brian Reeder, an assistant state schools superintendent, though Oregon plans to shift in the future to the survey’s method.

Currently, the state measures how many 12th-graders who began the school year in September received a regular diploma in June, while the Education Week survey estimated how many ninth-graders receive a regular diploma four years later. Both measures exclude students who receive alternative diplomas, like some in the special education population, and those who receive a G.E.D.

A few states, including New Hampshire, South Carolina and Tennessee, were not included in the national group’s calculations because of unavailable data.

Reeder said the Education Week numbers on black students seemed particularly high to him. He said state estimates show blacks with a higher dropout rate than whites, but not the kind of disparity to result in the Education Week estimates.

But state Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo said the data still show that Oregon public schools, particularly those in the Portland metro area that educate the bulk of the state’s black schoolchildren, have a lot of work to do.

Efforts to steer more students into Head Start programs and full-day kindergarten, and to focus on adult literacy, are aimed at addressing the issue of minority student performance, she said.

“We are doing a lot of things that we believe are going to be turning these numbers around,” Castillo said. “It’s a matter of us continuing to be very focused, and work in an urgent way on this issue.”

Other minority student group graduation figures also were on the low side in Oregon, according to the Education Week study. Just 37.3 percent of Native American students in Oregon graduate with a regular diploma, compared with 47.4 percent nationally, the survey found, along with 68.1 percent of the Asian student population, compared with 77 percent nationally.

But at 55 percent, the state’s Hispanic students kept pace with their national counterparts.