ST. PAUL - Three in four St. Paul Public Schools students earned high school diplomas on time last year as the school district and Minnesota saw gains across all ethnic groups.
Four-year graduation rates grew to 75.6 percent from 73.3 percent in St. Paul and to 81.2 percent from 79.8 percent statewide.
African-American students and those learning English made particularly notable progress, although wide achievement gaps remain.
Even as St. Paul’s overall graduation rate trailed the state, the district’s black, Hispanic, English-learning and low-income students substantially outperformed the Minnesota average.
In addition, St. Paul’s overall graduation rate was 17 percentage points higher than that of Minneapolis Public Schools.
Theresa Battle, assistant superintendent for St. Paul high schools, said the district spends a lot of energy helping students make the transition to high school. All but one of the comprehensive high schools have upperclassmen mentoring freshmen, and minority students can sign up for tutors and college-prep classes.
“We’ve really been attending to our freshmen,” Battle said, adding that the district is making sure they engage with their studies and get help from community partners.
Battle said the St. Paul district is proud of its progress on graduation rates, but work remains to be done with minority students.
She said the district wants to strengthen relationships between students and staff, and empower high schoolers to study what interests them, be it aerospace, trades or fine arts.
Minnesota’s graduation rate is on par with the national average of 81 percent, although that figure is for the class of 2013.
Minnesota aims to graduate 90 percent of all students on time by 2020 with no student group under 85 percent. There’s a lot of ground to make up; black and Hispanic students are in the low 60s, and American Indians are just above 50 percent.
However, graduation rates among those groups have been trending up.
“This is ambitious, but we think we can do it. We are seeing faster growth with our students of color while still seeing significant growth with our white students,” state Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius said.
Cassellius attributed the graduation gains to more rigorous academic standards that took effect for math in 2007 and reading in 2010, as well as a reporting system that holds schools and school districts publicly accountable for the performance of all students.
But Jim Bartholomew, education policy director for the Minnesota Business Partnership, said he wonders how much of the progress is real. Minnesota last year tossed its requirement that students pass high school reading and writing tests in order to graduate, and the state saw a big jump in diplomas awarded.
“You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt now,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re back to where we were 15 to 20 years ago, where if kids were able to put in the time and get through school, they get a diploma, whether they were prepared or not.”
Educators and Democratic lawmakers generally supported dropping the GRAD test in favor of the ACT or other career-readiness assessments.
Stacey Gray Akyea, research director for St. Paul schools, said the district took advantage of the new law and tracked down students who were ready to graduate but couldn’t pass the GRAD tests. Those students don’t improve the district’s on-time graduation figures, but the state also publishes less closely watched five- and six-year completion rates. The district had 109 students who earned diplomas in 2014 after five years of high school - raising that class’ completion rate to 77.8 percent from 73.3 percent.
“At any point, we want our students to be successful, no matter how long it takes,” Gray Akyea said.
While St. Paul has made considerable progress in its on-time graduation rate - an increase of 12.2 percentage points since 2010 - the dropout rate has fallen only slightly in that time, to 6.5 percent from 7.2 percent.
Meanwhile, the district has improved at keeping track on students who leave the district for private or home schooling or another state. St. Paul had no records for 2.5 percent of its 2014 class, down from 7.7 percent in 2010.
The Pioneer Press is a media partner with Forum News Service.
