Although there are still disparities in high school graduation rates for students of color, students in foster care, and those experiencing homelessness, the state has seen significant improvements in the last few years.
Gov. Jay Inslee drew attention to those improvements during a briefing with state education leaders Wednesday.
High school graduation rates have increased by about 6 percentage points over the last 10 years, bringing the 2022 graduation rate to 82.3 percent.
In an interview Wednesday, state Superintendent Chris Reykdal said the increase was the result of a deliberate focus on getting kids to the finish line, especially during the pandemic.
“We held steady with where we were two years ago,” Reykdal said. “We put a ton of effort in the first year getting seniors graduated, and that really paid off.” The 2020 graduation rate was 82.9 percent.
Black and migrant students had the highest uptick in graduation rates from 2021 to 2022. About 81 percent of Black students in 2022 graduated, up 3.6 percentage points from the previous year. Graduation rates among migrant students have gone up about 3 percentage points since 2021, bringing the 2022 rate to about 77 percent.
Perhaps surprisingly, many school districts across the nation saw an improvement in graduation rates after the pandemic started, possibly due to relaxed graduation requirements. Some districts passed kids automatically starting in 2020 because of COVID-19 disruptions to education.
In Washington, all students could obtain waivers that allowed them to graduate without fulfilling some credits. And in Seattle, students did not receive failing grades in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.
In Seattle Public Schools, the largest district in the state, the graduation rate for the class of 2022 was about 86 percent, about 6 percentage points up from pre-pandemic years.
“We’re still seeing the growth in historically underserved communities, those are improving faster than the state average,” Reykdal said. “Anytime you have a system that puts its attention to the right thing, you’re going to get results.”
Still, some groups continue to lag. For example, graduation rates for Washington students in foster care are among the lowest. In 2022 only about 53 percent of students in foster care graduated from high school. Still, that’s about 5 percentage points up from the class of 2021.
There were also improvements in graduation rates among Washington students who are experiencing homelessness. Since 2021, graduation rates increased by 1.6 percentage points and nearly 61 percent of students in 2022 graduated.
“This is gratifying to me because these kids are kids with real challenges coming out of foster care and homelessness,” Inslee said during the briefing. “High school is tough enough.”
Inslee said he was also celebrating the improvements in graduation rates among students with disabilities, which was about 65 percent in 2022, up about 3.5 percentage points from 2019.
“To me, every single child with disabilities who has a shot at life is a miracle for us,” Inslee said. “For every one of those percentages, it’s several hundred kids who are going to have a shot and I think that’s how we have to look at this.”
More needs to be done to get graduation rates up among student groups with the most challenges, Inslee said.
Dropout rates among students in foster care and who are experiencing homelessness are also the highest, about 27 percent and 25 percent.
High school graduation data is calculated based on students who graduated in four years. But it’s important to also think about those who graduated in five, six, or seven years, said Deb Came, assistant of assessment and student information at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Since 2015, about 3 percent of students graduated in five years and about 1 percent of students graduated in six years. Around 1 percent or lower graduated in seven years. The state stops tracking high school graduation data at age 21, even though some adults do go on to finish later in life — usually by earning a GED, or high school equivalency diploma.
