Montgomery, Fairfax top nation in graduation rates

Using complex calculations that track students from the ninth grade through senior year, Education Week puts Montgomery’s graduation rate at 85.7 percent in 2008, up from 83.1 percent in 2007. Fairfax graduated 85.1 percent of its class, up from 82.5 percent.

That’s a whole lot of caps being thrown in the air.

“I’ve been a superintendent for 35 years. About two hours ago, I watched my first-graders cross the stage at graduation,” said Montgomery Superintendent Jerry Weast, referring to his 1999 entry into the school system. “Graduation started in preschool in Montgomery County. That’s where it should start everywhere.”

The public school systems in Prince William and Prince George’s counties rang in at 17th and 20th, respectively — a slip from 15th for Prince William, but a pretty big leap from 30th place for Prince George’s.

But Prince George’s also ranked on Education Week’s list of “dropout epicenters,” 25 school districts that, together, accounted for one of every five “nongraduates” for the class of 2011.

A comparably small school system, the District of Columbia, was not listed among the large school districts, but its 43 percent graduation rate in 2008 would not have made for an impressive finish.

But 2008 is virtually another planet to D.C. residents, who have watched aggressive — and polarizing — reforms instilled in the school system. Efforts are continuing in full swing as Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson plans to introduce an English curriculum into the schools this fall, the first move in a three-year plan to create a curriculum for the district.

Weast said that’s something his neighbor got wrong. “You start with a curriculum, you don’t start with a test. The curriculum ought to lead you somewhere that is aspirational, where you want to go, and the kid wants

to go,” he said, speaking on a panel Tuesday for the “Diplomas Count” release.

Nationwide, the graduation rate has shot up significantly after two years of “decline and stagnation”; at 72 percent, high school completion hasn’t been this high since the 1980s.

“Just as Americans have been following the stock market and employment reports for signs of an economic turnaround, education watchers have been on the lookout for improving graduation rates for the better part of a decade,” said Christopher Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit that publishes Education Week. “It looks like we are finally seeing strong signs of a broad-based educational recovery, which we hope will gain further momentum.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, cautioned that much work remains for the country’s schools.

“The overall graduation rate of 72 percent still leaves far too many young people behind, especially boys, minorities and urban residents,” said the national teachers union chief.

“Further, the record rates occurred in 2008, before the full effect of budget shortfalls hit our schools and before the wave of recently enacted state legislation that will undoubtedly hurt students,” she said, referring to cuts in education spending during the recession.

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