Graduation Rates Reach Six-Year High

Hillhouse High School students are not only winning at football, basketball and track. They’re increasingly winning in the graduation race, too.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy stopped by the high school Monday to announce that the state has increased its graduation rate for a sixth year in a row, and that low-performing ​“alliance/opportunity” district schools like Hillhouse continued to see significant improvement in their graduation rates.

The state’s four-year cohort graduation rate reached a record high of 87.4 percent in 2016, surpassing the national average graduation rate of 83.2, Malloy said. He pointed out the state’s six years of increased graduation rates, came after five years of decline. Hillhouse, with its graduation rate of 80.4 percent in 2016, had the second largest five-year increase in the state. In 2011, the school’s graduation rate was 51.4 percent.

As a district, New Haven Public Schools increased its four-year rate to 77.5 percent in 2016, a 13.6 percentage point increase since 2011.

The state provides increased funding and additional accountability requirements for what the state Department of Education calls ​“alliance” districts, or Connecticut’s 30 lowest performing districts. New Haven is part of a ten-district subset of the alliance school districts, formerly known as ​“educational reform” districts, now called ​“opportunity” districts. State Department of Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell said the name change came through input from the districts seeking a more positive spin on the designation.

Opportunity districts represent schools in the state with the highest need. Malloy said the graduation gains at those schools achieved in the last five years have surpassed that of the alliance districts. In fact, opportunity district schools outstripped the improvement of the state as a whole, growing by 9 percentage points from 63.6 percent to 73 percent, while alliance districts improved by 7.1 percentage points and the state improved by 4.7 percentage points.

“We have increased our investment in education, and by doing so we have paved the way for a brighter future for thousands of Connecticut’s children and their families,” he said. ​“And with this announcement we celebrate six years of increased graduation rates. It’s clear that the investments that we are making are paying off.”

But Malloy said that the investments are not enough. His proposed new state budget includes a new formula for funding education that he said that would be fairer and based on ​“local property tax burden, student need and current enrollment.”

Mayor Toni Harp attributed the increase of graduation rates in New Haven, and at Hillhouse in particular, to the work of dedicated teachers and administrators as well as the district’s commitment to reducing absenteeism.

“In New Haven, we know that in order to get a student through school, we must be successful in keeping them in school,” she said.

She said the additional wraparound services that the district provides to address what happens inside and outside the classroom, including the restorative practices the district uses when it comes to disciplining students, are all aimed at keeping students in class.

The graduation rates for black and Hispanic students in the state also continued to increase, growing by 7.6 percentage points since 2011 for black students and 12.2 percent for Hispanic students.