Definitions: A student graduates on-time if he/she receives a high school diploma within four years of starting 9th grade. Total graduation rate is the percentage of all students who graduated from high school within four years after they started 9th grade. The numerator is all high school students who graduated with a high school diploma within four years of starting 9th grade. The denominator is the total cohort size who started 9th grade four years prior to graduation.
The same definition applies to racial/ethnic categories. That is, the numerator is all high school students from a particular racial/ethnic background who graduated within four years of starting 9th grade. The denominator is all high school students from that racial/ethnic background who started 9th grade together.
Data Source: Data for this measure come from the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Data were retrieved from "Graduation and Dropout Statistics" reports, and Appendix A and D at http://www.k12.wa.us/dataadmin/.
S: Data have been suppressed due to low numbers. Data were suppressed if the enrollment of students served in any of the 9th, 10th, 11th or 12th grade was 10 or less.
Footnotes:
Data last updated in May 2012 by Washington KIDS COUNT.
“A student is considered to be a graduate if he or she received a high school diploma or an adult diploma from a community college program during the reporting period (including a summer program). On-time graduates are those who receive a diploma in the expected year,” published online at http://www.k12.wa.us/dataadmin/pubdocs/GradDropout/10-11/GradDropoutStats_2010-11.pdf.
OSPI suggests using caution when making comparisons across schools, districts, and states and from one year to another as different methods of calculations were used for on-time and extended graduation rates and annual and cohort dropout rates. For detailed discussion of methods and criteria that OSPI used to include or exclude groups (such as transfers in, transfers out etc.) in the calculations, please read their "Graduation and Dropout Statistics 2010-11 Report" at the link provided above.
Race/ethnicity is self-reported by either students or parents/guardians. When students report more than one racial/ethnic category, OSPI reports the category listed first. Therefore, the racial/ethnic categories are not mutually exclusive.
Note: Maps use the natural break classification method, which reflects patterns
in the data by dividing the map into naturally occurring groups. Using statistical tools, this method
determines cut-off points for each group by identifying large gaps in data values.