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Source: New York State Education Department

New York City’s graduation rates have increased for the fifth time in as many years.

The 4-year graduation rate for students who entered high school in 2005 rose to 59 percent, according to data released today by State Education Commissioner David Steiner. That’s 3 percentage points higher than the graduation rate of 56 percent last year for students who started ninth grade in 2004. Another 3.7 percent of students graduated last summer, just after their fourth year of high school. And the city’s 5-year graduation rate rose 3 points as well, to 66 percent.

The overall state graduation rate ticked upward by one percentage point, to 72 percent. Steiner noted that the pace of growth statewide has slowed from last year.

We’ll have more detailed information on New York City’s rates and coverage of the mayor and chancellor’s take on the data later today. In the meantime, the state’s slides and spreadsheets are available here.

Comptroller William Thompson is releasing his second education audit in two days right now, this time focusing on testing conditions and oversight in the city schools. Also for the second time in two days, the comptroller has barred a Department of Education spokesman from his announcement.

Today’s audit exposes “major flaws in testing by the New York City Department of Education,” Thompson’s office said in a press announcement this morning. But the audit says, “Our observations conducted at the sample schools on the day of testing did not reveal any instances of cheating.”

Today’s report is already drawing some of the same criticism from the city as yesterday’s audit, about how city schools qualify students for graduation. That audit found sloppy record-keeping at many city schools but no clear evidence of grade-tampering. City officials charged that Thompson conducted the graduation audit for political, rather than professional, reasons. As the city comptroller, Thompson’s job is to audit official city statistics. But he is also the main challenger to Mayor Bloomberg’s reelection bid.

DOE press chief David Cantor leveled the first complaints about today’s audit just minutes after the press conference began — a press conference that he was not attending after being kicked out by a member of Thompson’s staff. (more…)

The accelerating 2009 mayoral campaign is distracting from real information inside an audit of city graduation rates released by the city comptroller’s office today. In fact, the audit is neither as damning as Bill Thompson Jr., the comptroller and mayoral hopeful, is claiming — nor as unequivocally rosy as the Bloomberg administration says.

Thompson said the audit suggests that principals and teachers responded to pressure to raise graduation rates by falsifying student records. “The New York City Department of Education has become the Enron of American education, showing the gains and hiding the losses,” he said at a press conference today.

But the audit found no evidence of tampering. Thompson’s declaration about fudging numbers came in remarks to reporters, not the official audit. “Is it just about sloppy bookkeeping or sloppy record-keeping? I don’t think so,” he said. He added, “This is a case where you can read between the lines.”

The audit also concludes that only 2 out of 206 randomly selected graduates, or 1%, did not deserve their diplomas. That’s quite different than the 10% figure being widely reported. Auditors initially challenged 19 graduates, or 10%, but threw out the concerns about 17 of them after school officials provided documents showing they earned their diplomas. And 11 of the 19 had overall grade averages of 80% or better, according to the audit. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg announced today that New York’s graduation rates are on the rise for the seventh consecutive year.

According to Department of Education data the city’s four-year graduation rate climbed from nearly 53 percent in 2007 to over 56 percent in 2008. The nearly 4-percentage point jump refers to students who started ninth grade in 2004 and graduated in 2008.

The percentage of students graduating from the city’s public schools fell short of the statewide average of roughly 71 percent. But New York City’s rates were higher compared to those in major cities like Buffalo and Syracuse.

Calling the rate increase “dramatic,” Mayor Bloomberg declared it a victory for the 2002 law that centralized the city’s school governance. The law is set to sunset on June 30.

“The bottom line is, all signs are pointing in the right direction,” Bloomberg said. “And I think everybody understands that mayoral control really has been the key to all of this.” (more…)

Graduation data for students who entered high school in 2004 will be released today, the State Education Department has announced.

The city will announce that its graduation rate jumped four points, according to the New York Post. A gain of that magnitude would outstrip the increases of the last few years and would bring the city’s official graduation rate to 56 percent.

City officials were hinting at an increase last week: Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told an audience that he had looked at internal third- and fourth-year data for many of the city’s new small high schools and seen continued gains. “The results are consistently higher,” he said, adding that the rate was continuing to inch upward at large high schools as well.

Asked about graduation rate and dropout trends, the department’s data czar Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger told the City Council on Thursday, “We certainly expect rates to rise and everything else to go down.” (more…)

The high school report released today shows that the Gates Foundation’s support for small schools was worthwhile, according to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

His statement contrasts with the foundation’s own evaluation of its small schools spending, which it said last year had not produced the academic gains it had hoped. Bill Gates himself said in November that while New York City’s small schools have done better than others his foundation started, the schools still do not adequately prepare students for college.

Delivering introductory remarks before a panel discussion about small schools this morning, Klein said the Center for New York City Affairs report “confirms the work of the Gates Foundation,” which provided much of the funding that allowed the city to open small schools.

Today’s report ”carefully documents” that the schools have gotten better results than the large schools they replaced, Klein said — and with the same type of students, contrary to the charges by critics who say the small schools’ students start off better prepared. (In the schools’ early years, they enrolled students who were slightly less at-risk, but they now admit their fair share of overage students, students with disabilities, and students who are learning English, the report concludes.)

Despite his generally favorable review, Klein disputed some of the report’s findings, especially around graduation rates. (more…)

If the graduation requirements in effect for this year’s ninth-graders had applied to students who entered high school five years ago, the city’s graduation rate would be just 37 percent.

The new, more stringent requirements could cause the city’s graduation rate, which has only recently topped 50 percent, to plummet, advocates say in a new report (pdf) about what they call a “looming crisis” for the city schools. The report, prepared by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent group, details how poor and minority students could suffer most under the new rules.

Beginning with this year’s freshman class, all high school students will have to earn what’s called a Regents diploma by scoring 65 or higher on five different state exams. Until now, the state has allowed students who scored between 55 and 64 on any of the tests to graduate with a less rigorous diploma. The less rigorous diploma, called a local diploma, has been the most common type earned by city students.

At a press conference on the steps of the Department of Education this morning, CEJ and dozens of other advocates called for an emergency working group of state and city education officials to focus on how to help schools where few students are on track to graduate with Regents diplomas. (more…)

Satellite Academy graduate (via flickr)

New federal regulations are going to force many states to change the way they report high school graduation rates. But not New York, a spokesman from the state education department, Jonathan Burman, said.

That’s because the state already uses a formula that Burman calls “substantially compliant” with the one that all states are now required to use to calculate their graduation rates. In fact, New York adopted the formula in 2004, even before the governors of all 50 states promised three years ago to work toward adopting it.

Not that the state hasn’t had its fair share of statistical tugs-of-war. Before last year, the city touted a graduation rate that was calculated using a formula that excluded special education students and included students who earned GEDs instead of regular high school diplomas. Critics said this rate was artificially inflated. Last year, the city DOE agreed to begin using the state’s graduation rate formula after negotiating an agreement that would allow August graduates to be counted in the four-year rate. The city was on the vanguard: the new federal regulations also permit states to include August graduates in their calculations.

Once all states adopt the same formula — only 16 use it right now — we’ll be able to see how the state’s graduation rate compares to the rest of the country’s, in addition to being able to measure the city against the state. That won’t happen until 2011 at the earliest, however; the new regulation doesn’t requires states to adopt the uniform graduation rate until they release accountability reports for the 2010-2011 school year.

Four-Year Outcomes for the Class of 2007

When the state released graduation figures earlier this month, I wondered what the city’s old formula for determining graduation rates would have said about the class of 2007. Yesterday, Edwize pointed us to a 276-page report available on the DOE’s website that includes the answer to that question and much, much more.

Although the state’s graduation figure of 52 percent is the official one thanks to an agreement between the city and state last year, the DOE still calculated the graduation rate for the class of 2007 using its old formula, which gave credit for students graduating in August and for students completing a GED or IEP diploma rather than a local or Regents diploma. According to this formula, 62 percent of students entering the city’s high schools in the fall of 2003 graduated on time, an improvement of 2.3 percentage points over the class of 2006. (more…)

On Monday, New York State released the most recent graduation rate data. How did the community school districts fare? Schools located in two districts had graduation rates of more than 70%: District 26 (73%) and District 13 (76%). At the other end of the spectrum, three districts posted 4-year graduation rates of less than 40 percent — District 18 (32%), District 16 (34%), and District 19 (39%).

How did your district do? Check out the map below.

Eduwonkette blogs regularly at Education Week about national policy and research. At GothamSchools, she’ll be contributing her perspective on New York City schools data.