Governor Charlie Crist recently announced that Duval County's graduation rate rose 2.1 percentage points to 66.6 percent. Meanwhile, Duval County’s high school dropout rate declined from last year, dropping nearly 2.6 percentage points to 2.2 percent.

“Our graduation rate continues to increase while our dropout rate is decreasing thanks to the hard work of our students, teachers, principals and support staff,” said Duval County Public Schools Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals.  “The continued progress is encouraging, and we exceeded our Strategic Plan goal, which calls for dramatic improvements in our graduation rates over the next four years.”

Duval County’s graduation rate is an increase of 9.2 percentage points over the last five years.  The current dropout rate is a decrease of 4.4 percentage points over the last five years. 

The graduation rate being used in the new grading formula is the National Governor’s Association (NGA) rate. In September 2009, the State Board of Education approved the state’s new high school grading formula that incorporates graduation rates into the grading of high schools. The decision to use this rate was made because the federal government is moving all states to adopt a uniform calculation method that includes standard diplomas and excludes GEDs and special diplomas.

Florida calculates a cohort graduation rate. A cohort is defined as a group of students on the same schedule to graduate.  The graduation rate measures the percentage of students who graduate within four years of their first enrollment in ninth grade. Florida’s dropout rate is calculated by the percentage of ninth through twelfth-grade dropouts compared to the ninth through twelfth-grade total, year-long student membership. Since the graduation rate is based on a four-year cohort of students and the dropout rate is based on a single year, the two cannot be compared or combined.

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