Georgia’s high school graduation rate dropped more than 13 percentage points under a new, tougher measurement.
While the 2011 drop from 80.9 percent to 67.4 percent may look staggering, Georgia educators say they expected the dip, which now shows a more realistic picture of how many students are finishing high school on time.
The new method of calculating graduation rates — known as the adjusted cohort rate — includes only students who graduate within four years, leaving out those who may take longer or move over to GED or other adult-education programs. This changes the calculation to emphasize on-time graduations though the number of students graduating hasn’t necessarily changed.
In 2005, all 50 members of the National Governor’s Association agreed to move to the new graduation measure to make state-by-state data more comparable. In the past, states had varying ways of determining their own graduation rates.
Tennessee moved to the new calculation last year, officials said, and had a small drop from 86.1 percent to a state average graduation rate of 85.5 percent.