San Francisco high schools bump graduation rates

Graduation rates for San Francisco’s public high school students have continued to increase overall, according to state data released this week.

The overall graduation rate for students in 2015 was 86.5 percent, higher than the state rate of 82.7 percent, according to the California Department of Education’s 2015-2016 Cohort Outcome Data, which was released Tuesday.

That rate is a 1.6 percent increase over the previous year and a 9.3 percent increase since 2009-2010, according to school district officials.

Within student subgroups, the graduation rate increased for Latino, Filipino and Asian students, but dropped by less than 1 percentage point for Pacific Islander students, black and white students.

District officials said the rates showed a positive seven-year trend for black, Latino and Pacific Islander students overall, with those groups showing more rapid increases than others and narrowing the overall achievement gap.

The graduation rate for foster youths declined by 8.5 percentage points from the previous year.

The data also shows that 54.6 percent of students completed the course sequence required for entry to state universities with a grade of C or higher, significantly higher than the state rate of 45.4 percent.

Interim Superintendent Myong Leigh said in a statement:

“We’re happy to join the entire state of California in celebrating the fact that more of our youth are graduating from high school than ever before, while completing more college preparatory coursework.”

The district created a system in 2012-2013 to identify and track students in danger of not graduating and provide additional support.

School board president Shamann Walton said:

“We still have much work to do to increase achievement for our black and Latino students, but as you can see with the increases in graduation rates for these populations these last few years, we are laser focused on even better outcomes.”