Twin cities grad rates at 4-year high, but still well behind state average

More Twin Cities students are graduating high school, but the picture before and after graduation day doesn't look so bright, according to a new annual report from education organization Generation Next.

Four-year graduation rates at Minneapolis and St. Paul district and charter schools are at a four-year high of 64 percent, the report found, but that's still significantly less than the statewide rate of 81.9 percent.

Students in all racial groups saw improvement over four years, the report found, with Hispanic students making the biggest jump of 20 percentage points.

But the report also said only 38 percent of Twin Cities third-graders were proficient on 2016 state reading tests, and racial gaps are huge: 72 percent of white students were found proficient compared to 38 percent of American Indian students and less than a quarter of black, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander students.

"Third grade is the first year that children take formalized, standard state assessments," said Generation Next Executive Director Michelle Walker. "We have a number of students who have not had formal education in the United States or in their native countries, and so we have a short space of time from kindergarten to the end of third grade."

The Generation Next report showed wait lists for publicly funded early education like preschool or Head Start have shrunk in the past three years, although lists are still long.

In eighth grade, the report noted lackluster math scores, with 37 percent of Twin Cities students proficient on state tests.

Walker said the disappointing results in lower grades mean that even if students are graduating high school, the experience is different.

"They have less time for electives, they have less time to explore subjects perhaps that they wouldn't have had an opportunity to explore other than in school," she said. "They have less time maybe for extracurricular because they have to take more academic courses to stay on track."

There may also be less time for the kind of preparation that helps students eventually finish college. The report showed 38 percent of Twin Cities students in the class of 2008 achieving a degree within six years.

Still, one effort to intervene earlier with high schoolers appears to be gaining steam. The Minneapolis school district has a tool to aggregate data and flag ninth-graders not on track to graduate. St. Paul is trying a similar effort in three schools this year.

According to the Generation Next report, just over half of Minneapolis students are "on track," and in St. Paul the figure is 64 percent. Only a quarter of American Indian students and less than half of black students are on track in each district.

"The good news is that we know this as early as ninth grade," Walker said. "This is a much easier way than waiting until the end of the ninth grade to say you haven't passed the classes that are necessary. That gives a child very little time in their academic career to actually work on meeting all of those benchmarks and be done in four years."

Data is great, but it's not the end goal, said Washington Technology Magnet School Principal Mike McCollor. He outlined a three-step process: get the numbers, help teachers digest them, then act.

"We're pretty good at the data piece, right? We can give numbers on pretty much every kid in the Minneapolis or St. Paul public schools," McCollor said. "The third step is critically important ... What are we going to actually do about it?"