NC Class of 2020 had a record high school graduation rate. How much was due to COVID?
North Carolina’s graduation rate rose in a year where high schools were told to help keep seniors on pace to graduate during the coronavirus pandemic.
New state figures released on Wednesday show that a record 87.6% of North Carolina high school seniors graduated this year, up from 86.5% last year. Except for students with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency, the four-year graduation rate for all subgroups is now over 80%.
“North Carolinians should be encouraged that more students are earning their diplomas, especially in an increasingly competitive world where some kind of postsecondary training or education is essential for them to achieve their American Dream,” State Superintendent Mark Johnson said in a news release Wednesday.
The State Board of Education made multiple changes in the spring to help seniors, including giving them credit if they were passing their classes in March and lowering the graduation requirements in some school districts. The state board also waived required state high school exams due to the pandemic.
State education officials had previously said that amid the stress of COVID-19, they didn’t want seniors to be worried about whether they’d complete their final year of high school.
The state’s four-year graduation rate has risen since it was reported for the first time at 68.3% for the Class of 2006. But the growth in the rate had been flat the last few years before this year’s jump.
Since 2006, the graduation rate has increased 34 percentage points for Native American students, 26.6 points for students from low-income families, 24.8 points for Black students and 17.2 points for white students.
The graduation rate gap between white and Black students has narrowed from 13.1 points in 2006 to 5.5 points this year. The gap between students from low-income families and the state as a whole is now down to 5.4 points.
Go to https://bit.ly/3lHKsjx to view graduation data for school districts and individual schools.
Wake County has record graduation rate
The Wake County school system also saw a record graduation rate this year of 90.8%, up from 89.9% in 2019. Since 2012, Wake’s graduation rate has increased every year, rising from 80.6% in 2012.
“I am thrilled by the outstanding improvements in our four-year graduation rate, setting yet another district record for the eighth consecutive year,” Wake Superintendent Cathy Moore said in a news release. “I am particularly proud that we have increased our graduation rate by more than 10 percentage points since 2012, with significantly larger gains among students of color and those from low-income families.
Athens Drive High saw its graduation rate rise 3.7% percentage points this year to 90.4%, a record for the Raleigh school.
“That increase meant that we had 19 more students this year graduate that would haven’t graduated last year had we kept the same graduation rate,” Stephen Mares, principal of Athens Drive, said in an interview Wednesday. “That’s 19 lives that were positively impacted and a game changer.”
The graduation figures were mixed for some other school districts.
The graduation rate rose from 82.9% to 83.5% in Durham Public Schools. It rose from 89% to 91.1% in Orange County and from 90.9% to 92.7% in Chapel Hill-Carrboro.
But the graduation rate fell from 93.5% to 91.7% in Johnston County and from 88.5% to 87.3% in Chatham County.
The graduation rate remained unchanged at 85.5% in Charlotte-Meckleburg.
State makes COVID graduation changes
The final months of last school year for North Carolina’s 100,000 seniors was upended in mid-March when schools were closed to try to slow the spread of COVID-19. The uncertainty of how the school year would end left seniors and their parents demanding answers.
The state board voted to give seniors a passing grade for a spring course if they were passing as of March 13 — the last day before schools were closed. Students either got PC19 grades for passing or WC19 grades for withdrawal on their transcript instead of regular grades.
Mares said most of the Athens Drive students who graduated were already passing their classes on March 13. He said the state change allowed the school to focus earlier on the seniors who needed the extra help to graduate.
“Even though there were other seniors who said, ‘Oh I’m done because of I’ve earned the credit,’ we had to make sure that those students kept engaged and earned the credit,” Mares said.
The state board also temporarily suspended the ability of school districts to require more than the minimum of 22 credits required by the state for graduation.
Class of 2020 endured challenges
National, state and local leaders have hailed the spirit of the Class of 2020, which deal with the loss of many traditional senior year activities such as spring sports and performances, proms and mass in-person graduation ceremonies.
“Last spring was a difficult year, a challenging year all-around,” Mares said. “We were trying to provide a new way of teaching and learning while also trying to meet the whole needs of the students and get ready for a graduation, lunch and breakfast needs and family needs and things like that we do an awful lot of here in school in addition to teaching and learning,.”
Due to state-mandated social distancing requirements, schools improvised graduation ceremonies last spring. Virtual online events were mixed with small drive-in events on campus where mask-wearing seniors could walk across a stage to get their diplomas in front of a small group of guests taking pictures.
Some schools held ceremonies at speedways or in parking lots of closed malls.
Details about how graduations will be held for the Class of 2021 are still in flux due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
More than 70% of the state’s public schools students are using remote instruction only because school leaders in those districts say it’s not yet safe to resume face-to-face instruction.
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 12:20 PM.
