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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Tacoma graduation rate busts record

Donna Gordon Blankinship Associated Press

SEATTLE – The Tacoma school district took a well-earned bow on Tuesday at a celebration of record-breaking graduation rates. In four years, Washington’s second-largest school district has gone from graduating 55 percent of students in 2010 to beating the state average with a 78 percent graduation rate.

Improvement was seen at every high school and in every ethnic group, with the biggest increases among low-income and minority students. District Superintendent Carla Santorno said she believes Tacoma is on its way to meeting its goal of graduating 85 percent of its students by 2020.

Santorno called the numbers she announced Tuesday powerful and credited caring teachers and staff members who keep a close eye on students and data for the improvements over the past few years. “We still have much more work to do on our achievement gaps, but we’re heading in the right direction,” she said.

In the past two years, black students, who make up about 20 percent of the district’s enrollment, improved their high school graduation rate from 59.4 percent to 73.8 percent. The statewide graduation rate for black students in 2013 – the most recent year for which statewide data is available – was 65.4 percent.

In the same two years, Native American students’ graduation rate increased from 48.6 percent to 68.2 percent (2013 statewide rate: 52.5 percent); Hispanic students went from 57.5 percent to 67 percent (65.6 percent statewide in 2013); and low-income students went from 61.2 percent to 70.5 percent (64.6 percent statewide in 2013).

In 2007, a national researcher labeled all of Tacoma’s comprehensive high schools as “dropout factories” in an Associated Press story.

Santorno said the main key to success in Tacoma was treating every high school student like an individual and getting them the help they each needed, from tutoring to online classes to a visit home to check up on someone who has been absent from school.

“We’re trying to do anything we can to say yes to a student, to get the education and the content and the strategies that they need,” she said.