CMS Dropout Rate A Fuzzy Snapshot
While the uptown paper of record was busy with headlines touting a marginal dip in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ dropout rate, which fell from 5.9 to 5 percent last year, a less flattering assessment of the situation flew under the radar: How many CMS students are actually making it through the system to graduate? Answer: Less than 70 percent.
Based on data that tracks groups of ninth-graders across four years’ time and reports how many graduate on schedule, only 66 percent of CMS students accomplished the feat last year. Conversely, 34 percent of students who started ninth grade in CMS failed to graduate on schedule. Statewide, the so-called “cohort graduation rate” tallied nearly 72 percent.
The cohort graduation rate, by the state’s own acknowledgement, is “considered a more comprehensive picture of this issue” than the annual dropout rate, which only provides a snapshot of one year.
CMS’s 66 percent graduation rate was lower than similar-sized Wake County (78 percent) and Guilford County (80 percent), as well as neighboring counties like Union (81 percent), Gaston (75 percent), and Cabarrus (75 percent).
Within CMS, cohort graduation rates varied significantly by subgroups: White students tallied a graduation rate of 81 percent (2,872 students of 3,540); Black students, 55.5 percent (2,545 of 4,589); Hispanic students, 57.6 percent (577 of 1002); Asian students, 78.8 percent (353 of 448); American-Indian students, 62.5 percent (25 of 40); and Multi-Racial students, 55.3 percent (78 of 141).
The cohort graduation rates also varied wildly for different CMS high schools, ranging from 91 percent at Mallard Creek to 54.5 percent at West Charlotte. The rest of the bunch: Butler, 80 percent; EE Waddell, 58.7 percent; East Mecklenburg, 64 percent; Garinger, 66.5 percent; Harding, 82 percent; Hawthorne/TAPS, 41 percent; Hopewell, 74.5 percent; Independence, 66.8 percent; Myers Park, 79.6 percent; North Mecklenburg, 78 percent; Northeast School of the Arts, 73.5 percent.
Olympic High School’s graduation rate was categorized by its five schools-within-a-school: Bio-tech/Health, 86 percent; Renaissance, 78 percent; Global Study/Econ, 69 percent; International Business, 72 percent; and Math/Engineer Tech, 90 percent.
Phillip O. Berry High School’s cohort graduation was 81.5 percent; Providence, 86.7 percent; the Performance Learning Center, 87 percent; South Mecklenburg, 79 percent; West Mecklenburg, 56 percent; and Vance, 60 percent.
That’s a big-picture view of a big-picture problem, not a one-year snapshot headline of a marginal dropout decline.
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