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The city’s four-year high-school graduation rate slipped last year for the first time in a decade — dropping to 64.7 percent from 65.5 percent the year prior, education officials said yesterday.
With the small step back, it means the city’s on-time graduation rate has increased by just 2 percentage points since 2009 — the year the state began toughening standards for earning a high-school diploma.
Before that — particularly from 2005 to 2009 — the city’s graduation rate had risen significantly with almost each new graduating class.
City and state officials said the recent leveling off was directly connected to the tougher standards — which last year required students to score a 65 out of 100 on all five Regents exams.
The old passing mark, which was raised for one subject exam per year over five years, had been 55.
“We can’t be more encouraged. We keep raising standards and the kids keep doing better,” said Mayor Bloomberg, who focused on the gains since 2005 rather than the single-year drop during a presentation of the results at the Department of Education.
“This is improved performance. Yes, the nominal number is down, but the standards are so high,” he added. “Everybody had predicted that our graduation rates would fall precipitously, and that did not happen.”
While the boost in standards was meant to help address a disconnect between high-school graduation rates and measures of college readiness, data show that thousands of city kids are continuing to graduate unprepared for higher education.
Since 2009, the remediation rate for city public-school graduates who enroll at CUNY 2-year colleges has increased by about 6 percentage points — from just under 74 percent to 80 percent last year.
The state’s recently introduced measure of college readiness has increased slightly in city public schools but remains low — going from 20.8 percent in 2009 to 22.2 percent last year, including August graduates.
As part of the mixed bag of results, graduation rates for non-native English speakers dropped by nearly five percentages points last year — sinking to 40.5 percent from 45.1 percent the year prior.
It was the second straight year of declines for those students, who are often newly arrived immigrants. Additionally, long-standing achievement gaps between white students and their black and Hispanic classmates remained relatively stagnant.
Elsewhere in the state, the so-called “Big Four” cities also saw their graduation rates decline last year — even as the overall state graduation rate held steady at 74 percent.
In coming years, earning a high-school diploma is only expected to get more difficult. This year, all city high schools are forbidden from grading their own Regents exams for the first time — which is expected to eliminate a slight home-field advantage for students’ scores. And starting in 2013-14, curriculum and exams in high schools will gradually be aligned with higher standards known as Common Core.
Four-year city public-high-school graduation rates (includes August graduates):
Year / Grad rate:
* 2009 / 62.7%
* 2010 / 65.1%
* 2011 / 65.5%
* 2012 / 64.7%