With the recent release by the U.S. Department of Education of national high school completion rates, New Orleans has cause to celebrate. In terms of graduating students on time, we have closed the performance gap.
New Orleans outperformed the state and outperformed the nation.
States are now required to use a common measurement for high school completion: the percent of first time 9th graders who graduate within 4 years with a regular diploma (the 4-year cohort graduation rate1). The data on the graduating class of 2011 shows that nationally 76% of white students and 60% of black students graduated on time.
In New Orleans, 76.5% of our students graduated on time2
- Outperforming the national average for white students
- Outperforming the national average for black students by 16.5 percentage points
- Outperforming the state of Louisiana (70.9%)
- Outperforming Jefferson Parish (67%), Baton Rouge (62.3%) and Shreveport (61.5%)
New Orleans had 2,051 high school graduates in 2011, 443 more than if we were at the national average for black students, and 657 more than if we were still at New Orleans’ 2005 graduation rate.