Colorado Springs 2009 High School Graduation Rates Now Available

High school graduation rates have just been published for the entire state by the Colorado State Department of Education, so I thought I would update the story Colorado Springs Schools – You Get What You Pay For with current graduation rate information. Like the CSAP scores, it shows that the graduation rates are substantially higher for the more expensive school districts in the Colorado Springs area.

Without going into a lot of educational mumbo – jumbo about why this is a hard statistic to track, I’d like to point out that in school districts with higher student turnover, this is a MUCH harder thing to measure than it looks. Still, graduation rates correlate pretty well with the 3rd grade reading CSAP scores, with the exception of D11, which seems to have an abnormally low graduation rate for the 3rd grade test score levels. Ironically, this year was an improvement over last year’s figure of 66.7%. The state average of 2009 was 74.9%.

Another important thing to remember is that the larger districts (such as 11)  have many schools, and the graduation rate can vary quite a bit between them. The state site link above can also provide individual high school graduation rates within a district.