Preliminary figures were released Monday showing how many Missouri high school students graduated this year.
The numbers also use for the first time a federal guideline that only takes into account students who take four years to finish high school. Michele Clark is with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. She said the requirement will make it possible to compare Missouri’s performance with other states:
“Now the traditional way that Missouri has been calculating its graduation rates are based on a graduate cohort, which does include the students who take longer than four years to graduate…so there’s two rates, two ways of looking at the data, both are useful.”
The data released Monday shows that more than 84 percent of Caucasian students in Missouri graduated from high school this year, while just under 64 percent of African-American students did so – and just under 74 percent of Hispanic students. Gender-wise, nearly 84 percent of female students graduated this year, compared to just over 76 percent of male students.
Full results will be released December 1.