New Haven Promise’s first four cohorts of scholarship recipients had a four-year college graduation rate higher than 65 percent.
The local scholarship fund is now looking to bump that number up to 75 percent for its next group of public school student scholars.
New Haven Promise released that graduation rate data and announced the new 75 percent initiative Friday morning.
Founded in 2010 through a collaboration between The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Yale University, and the New Haven Board of Education, New Haven Promise awards partial and full tuition scholarships to state public colleges and universities for New Haven Public Schools students who have a positive disciplinary record during high school, have completed 40 hours of community service, have a 90 percent attendance record or better, and have a cumulative 3.0 GPA or higher at graduation.
See below for the stats included in New Haven Promise’s Friday press release, and watch a video above of New Haven Promise President Patricia Melton walking through some of that newly released data.
• Of those who were funded by the Promise scholarship — which now represents about a third of the resident public school students — 88 percent attended a four-year college.
• All of the first four four-year college cohorts exceeded (or are expected to exceed, in the case of 2014) a graduation rate above 65 percent.
• More than 60 percent of those who earned four-year degrees did so within four years of graduating from high school.
• African-American students, who comprise nearly half of the students who attended four-year colleges, graduated at a rate of 64 percent — more than 20 points higher than national average (39.7 percent).
• More than half of the Hispanic students who attended a community college on a Promise scholarship earned either an Associates or Bachelors degree.
• Students from the lowest household income band (under $30,000) — the largest segment of Promise scholars — graduated at a rate of 63 percent.
• Seventy percent of the Scholars who enrolled at a four-year institution were first-generation to college and that group graduated at 63 percent.
• Students attending in-state four-year public universities graduated at a higher rate (68.8 percent) than those who attended private institutions (65.0%).
• In terms of the college graduation rates, New Haven Academy led the way among the high schools with a rate of 96 percent, followed by Hill Career Regional (80.2%). Wilbur Cross has provided the most number of bachelor’s degrees (75).
• The neighborhoods targeted by the Yale Community Hiring Initiative — in an effort to address particular persistent economic challenges — produced nearly half of the bachelor’s degrees as those students graduated at a higher rate (69.0%) than those from non-target neighborhoods (65.5%).
At least someone has money in New Haven education! It'll be harder for kids to get accepted to any colleges given the skeletal conditions they face in their classrooms. This program is fantastic, but it is certainly backwards.