Though located in a region with two of the nation’s best-performing school systems, the District of Columbia ranks fourth-worst in the country when it comes to preparing its public school students for college, according to a report released Tuesday.
As Mayor Adrian Fenty takes control over the troubled, 55,000-student system, data from the nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education Research Center shows only 58.2 percent of the District’s 2007 class of public school students will leave high school with a diploma. And they’ll enter the nation’s most highly trained and specialized work force in which more than 15 percent of employees have college degrees and earn a median income of more than $59,000 annually, the report said.
Nationally, on average, some 70 percent complete high school, according to the Bethesda organization’s report, “Diplomas Count: Ready for What? Preparing for College, Careers and Life After High School.”
The study, based on data for the 2003-04 academic year, shows Virginia and Maryland fare far better, graduating 73.1 percent and 74.7 percent of their students, respectively. In the region, Montgomery and Fairfax counties did even better, with each graduating more than 80 percent of students. Prince George’s County graduated 66 percent of its students.
The District fared worse this year than in the organization’s 2006 report, which relied on data from 2002-03. That report found 58.9 percent of students graduated. DCPS spokeswoman Audrey Williams had no comment on the report Tuesday. In the 2006 report, Virginia graduated 74.9 percent of its students and Maryland graduated 74.4 percent.
Center DirectorChristopher Swanson attributed the gap between the District’s poor graduation rate and high percentage of trained employees to a commuter work force. D.C. is not doing enough to train its own students to work here, he said.
By the numbers
» Only South Carolina, which graduated 53.8 percent of its students; Nevada, at 54 percent; and Georgia, at 56.1 percent, fared worse than the District, according to the report. Utah scored the highest, graduating 83.8 percent of public school students.
» At least 15.7 percent of the District of Columbia’s work force held jobs that generally required college degrees, including lawyers, engineers and others, and had a median income of about $59,000, the report said. Only Massachusetts came close to that, with 9.2 percent of its workers holding similar jobs. About 8.6 percent of Marylanders and 8.1 percent of Virginians held similar jobs.
» Discrepancies between the report’s data and that given by the states exist. For example, the Maryland’s Department of Education said 84 percent of its students graduated in 2004. Virginia said 82 percent of its students graduated that same year. DCPS spokeswoman Audrey Williams said DCPS graduated 66 percent of its students in 2006. The Center uses a different methodology for its report than the states generally report.
