New figures show that Minnesota’s high school graduation rate dropped in 2023

CATHY WURZER: New figures out today show Minnesota's high school graduation rate dropped a little bit in 2023. Last year, graduation rates rebounded to levels seen prior to the pandemic. But in 2023, it dipped slightly, with about 83% of high school students graduating in four years.

There were slight decreases in graduation rates for BIPOC students. We wanted to zoom in on one district to talk about this in more detail. So joining us right now is Christine Tucci Osorio-- Osorio. I'm going to try that again, Christine-- Christine Tucci Osorio, superintendent of North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale School District. It's good to hear your voice again.

CHRISTINE TUCCI OSORIO: Great to be back on the show, Cathy. Thanks for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Absolutely. Let me see now. I was going through figures. Your district's graduation rate was just a little bit below the state average, 81.5%. It dropped a couple points from 2022. What do you think is causing that decline?

CHRISTINE TUCCI OSORIO: Well, a couple of things, I think, for sure. And I always like to remind people that when we are talking about graduation rates that just came out yesterday, we are talking last year's graduation rates, of course. So they're almost a year later.

And two things to keep in mind-- that we look at our four-year graduation rate and our seven-year graduation rate. I think a lot of people don't know or maybe don't realize that if students who have an IEP or in special education services or some who are new to the country actually can stay in school longer. And so we look at both of those rates. Some of our students who don't graduate in four are actually on track to graduate in seven years. And so we always try to look at the combination of the two because obviously we have a lot of students with varying needs.

And you're right. We saw-- obviously, we weren't thrilled to see a dip, a couple percentage point drop this past year. And we've had a couple groups that bumped up a little bit and a couple that dropped a point or two. And so we're constantly looking at that.

I think one of the factors for us is we've got a lot of students in our online high school, too, and many of whom have come to us already a little bit credit deficient, as they're trying to make up for some lost ground, maybe during the pandemic. And so we are probably going to be seeing the impact of this for quite some time.

I will say the pandemic has impacted our schools in a number of ways-- of course, academics. But if you think about-- we've been having all these conversations about SROs in schools and some of the social-emotional needs of learners and things like that. And it's really impacting us. It's got an impact.

I will say one thing we're excited about-- our suspension data and even police calls to a high school are down dramatically from a year ago. And I think we're very hopeful that with a lot of these other systems in place with social-emotional learning and helping kids reconnect with school communities better, we're going to see that achievement data is going to follow suit with it.

CATHY WURZER: How are you--

CHRISTINE TUCCI OSORIO: So there's a lot of complicating factors with it for sure.

CATHY WURZER: Sounds like it. How is your absenteeism rate?

CHRISTINE TUCCI OSORIO: Oh my gosh. I'm glad you mentioned that, Cathy, because that has been one of our greatest challenges. And you've heard about it on a statewide level for sure. You've heard about it nationally. And I will tell you, here in our district, it's very, very, very concerning. We have a huge number of students who are missing more than 10% of the school year.

CATHY WURZER: Where are they going? Where are they?

CHRISTINE TUCCI OSORIO: That's what we are working on figuring out. In fact, we've had-- well, we know that there are students internally who we need to stay on top of to come get to school. But in Minnesota, once a child has missed 15 consecutive days of school, they have to be dropped from that system.

And so we've actually been having conversations with our-- Ramsey County Attorney John Choi has been convening many meetings with our Ramsey County superintendents, for example, because we're looking at finding those students who maybe got dropped from our system. We call it a 15-day drop in education. That 15-day drop, we obviously keep trying to track them down.