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The graduation rate for students in the Rochester City School District increased slightly, though it continues to lag behind the rest of the state’s “Big Five” urban districts. Rochester’s graduation rate went from 45.5 percent to 47.5 percent, an increase of two points for students who entered ninth grade in 2012 and graduated in June 2016. 

The New York State Department of Education released data today showing that the statewide graduation rate went up to 79.4 percent from 78.1 percent. When August graduation rates are included, the rate tops 81 percent.

The New York City and Buffalo school districts continue to show improvement with graduation rates coming in at 69.6 percent and 61.7 percent respectively. But the real winner was the Syracuse school district, which shot up to 60.9 percent from 54.5 percent, a jump of 6.4 points.

Though the RCSD improved its overall four-year graduation rate,  the district’s performance continues to show signs of trouble. For instance, there was a slight increase in the number of English language learner students still enrolled after four years: from 39.9 percent to 40.1 percent. And the district’s ELL dropout rate was 42.9 percent and 30.9 percent for students with disabilities.

This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2017.

I was born and raised in the Rochester area, but I lived in California and Florida before returning home about 12 years ago. I'm a vegetarian and live with my husband and our three pugs. I cover education,...

6 replies on “Rochester’s four-year graduation rate still below 50 percent”

  2. And yet City fully supports the status quo. NYC has an active charter school program, and their schools outperform the public ones on average. City never provides any data on charters versus public test performance for Rochester. It would be informative.

  3. If you follow the link in the article to the NYSED press release… and then follow the link at the bottom of the press release to a Powerpoint with additional data… you’ll find the information about charter school graduation rates, at least on a state-wide basis.

    And you’ll see that statewide, charter schools had a 71.0% graduation rate, which trails the statewide public school mark of 79.4%.

    I dug into the NYSED database to try and get graduation rate data for just the city of Rochester charters, but not all of them have accessible data, so getting a local comparison wasn’t possible so far as I could tell.

  4. Mark, thanks for the info, but I think comparing charter results to the statewide average is misleading, just as comparing the city results to the state is. Most charters are in the big cities, so they should be compared to schools in the cities. In NYC, I believe they outperform the city schools, although as one might expect, there are significant variations in results for both.

  6. I was looking at graduation rates, not standardized test scores, since that is what this City article is about.

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