Suburban Washington high school graduation rates are among the highest in the nation, according to a report released Tuesday.
Loudoun County led the region with 89 percent of its high school students estimated to earn a diploma within four years, according to federal data compiled by the trade publication Education Week. The survey tracked trends between 1996 and 2006, using the most recent nationwide information available.
Montgomery County schools, at 81 percent, tied with the Cypress-Fairbanks school system in Texas for the top rate in the nation among the 50 largest school districts. Montgomery is the 16th-largest school system in the nation.
“Our goal is for every one of our students to graduate prepared for education beyond high school and for the demands of the workplace,” said Board of Education President Shirley Brandman.
The slightly larger Fairfax County school system placed third with 79 percent, outpacing the national rate of 69 percent. D.C. Public Schools had the region’s lowest 2006 graduation rate at 49 percent, placing it above only Nevada.
While the national rate has gained three percentage points since 1996, all but two local school districts — Loudoun and Arlington County — have seen declines. The falloff has come as the districts have experienced an increase in the number of low-income students, and as Virginia and Maryland have developed more rigorous graduation standards in response to No Child Left Behind.
Even as the school systems that scored relatively well take pride, experts say the data are neither credible nor useful for making comparisons.
“Graduation rate is a dynamic figure,” said Joydeep Roy, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. It cannot be measured “using the data we currently have from the U.S. Department of Education, that the Education Week researchers use.”
That method follows the percentage of students in a given grade level at each of the succeeding grade levels. What it cannot do, Roy said, is take into account students who are repeating grades, or the thousands of students who transfer in or out of a district. As a result, it underestimates graduation rates, especially in districts with large numbers of grade repeaters or highly transient populations.
The solution, according to Roy and to state officials, is to track students through high school, and as they move to different schools or districts. Virginia began that process in 2004 by assigning students identification numbers, and this year released its first true graduation rates.
Loudoun County’s rate rose to 94 percent, according to those statistics, up from 89 percent using the Education Week analysis. Alexandria schools’ rate jumped to 76 percent instead of 55 percent.
“We’re taking issue” with the Education Week data, said Virginia schools spokeswoman Julie Grimes. “Here we’ve got 2008 data, which is an actual number, and they’re still using estimates.”
Maryland issued identification numbers to ninth-graders for the first time in 2008, and will report similar graduation data beginning in 2012.
