La. 47th in high school grad rate

• By WILL SENTELL
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 23, 2009 - Page: 4B

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Louisiana ranks 47th in the nation in its public high school graduation rate, the U.S. Department of Education says.

In addition, the state has the highest percentage in the nation among ninth-graders who quit school, the report says.

Both figures are contained in a study issued this week by the National Center for Education Statistics, the data-gathering arm of the federal education agency.

“Regardless of how you calculate it, we don’t have anything that we can be proud of when it comes to this,” state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek said of high school graduation and dropout rates.

The study says 61.3 percent of Louisiana public high school students graduated on time in 2007, the year that federal officials scrutinized.

Only three states had lower rates that year: Nevada at 52 percent; South Carolina, 58.9 percent; and New Mexico, 59.1 percent.

The national graduation rate was 73.9 percent. Vermont was tops in the nation with a rate of 88.6 percent.

In Louisiana, the on-time graduation rate was 71.3 percent for white students and 49.9 percent for black students, according to the review.

The report also says Louisiana’s ninth-grade dropout rate, 8.3 percent, is tops in the nation.

Three states did not provide grade-by-grade breakdowns.

The federal report marks the second study in the past week that painted a bleaker graduation picture than state education officials claim.

The Southern Regional Education Board said last week that Louisiana suffered the biggest drop in its public high school graduation rate of any state in the Southern region over a five-year period.

Pastorek said the federal study, like the SREB report, unfairly penalizes Louisiana for students who left the state after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.