District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

Recommended Graduation Rate Standard for 2009 AYP Determinations

The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires every state to establish a graduation rate standard and to use that standard as part of the "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) determination for each of its public high schools.

At its January 2008 meeting, the Board voted to establish the following standard for use in the 2008 AYP determinations, to be applied in the aggregate and to all student subgroups meeting the minimum group size requirements:

• a four-year graduation rate of 60 percent applied to the 2007 graduation cohort, or
• a five-year graduation rate of 65 percent applied to the 2006 graduation cohort, or
• a two percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate compared to the four-year graduation rate for the previous year.

The U.S. Department of Education (USED) did not approve our request to use a five-year rate, but did approve the other two components of this standard for the 2008 AYP determinations only. USED indicated that they expected Massachusetts to provide a "more challenging" graduation rate standard in future years.

It is my recommendation that the Board establish the following standard for use in the 2009 AYP determinations, again to be applied in the aggregate and to all student subgroups meeting the minimum group size requirements:

• a four-year graduation rate of 65 percent for the class of 2008, or
• a two percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate from the class of 2007 to the class of 2008.

While most high schools will meet this revised standard in 2009 for students in the aggregate and their subgroups, an expectation of continued improvement will encourage those schools with high student drop-out rates or low rates of competency determination attainment to maintain their efforts to engage and support those students to meet our state's AYP graduation rate standard in future years.

In making this recommendation, I took several factors into account:

• We apply the graduation rate standard to each student subgroup, in order to support our efforts to hold districts and schools accountable for all of the children in their care. While the statewide average graduation rate for students in the aggregate was just over 81% in 2008, average rates for our student subgroups ranged from a high of 87% for White and Asian students, to 68% for African-American/Black students, 65% for low-income students, 64% for special education students, 58% for Hispanic students, and 56% percent for students with limited English proficiency. Sixty-five percent is a realistic short-term target for our lowest performing schools.
• By including an option for demonstrating improvement, a school or district with a student subgroup rate below the 65 percent standard has a realistic opportunity to meet their AYP goal for the current year. I am very concerned by the low graduation rates for certain student subgroups, and I think it is essential that we credit, within our school accountability system, schools' efforts to improve their ability to engage students through graduation.
• Because the graduation rate calculation takes into account students who drop out over a four-year period, even the most effective remedial efforts will take some time to be fully reflected in the rate.
• Beginning next year with the class of 2009 cohort, we plan to amend our graduation rate cohort definition to include students who were enrolled in grade 8 in a district but who did not subsequently enroll in grade 9. This change in cohort definition will identify these students as non-graduates, and we anticipate a one-time downward impact on the four- and five-year graduation rates next year as a consequence of this reporting change.

Earlier this month I sent you copies of our recently released graduation rate report, which includes data on both the four-year rate for the class of 2008 and the five-year rate for the class of 2007. This report is also available on our website at http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/reports/gradrates/. Note that although we calculate both four- and five-year graduation rates, the U.S. Department of Education requires us to use the four-year rate for AYP purposes.

Following our initial discussion of this issue at the February Board meeting, I will ask the Board to vote on the standard at our March meeting. If you have any questions or need further information, please contact Matt Pakos, the Department's Director of School Improvement Grant Programs, at 781-338-3507; Rob Curtin, our Director of Data Analysis and Reporting, at 781-338-3582; or me.