High School Graduation Rates – Atlanta, GA

Atlanta grad rate doesn’t add up, By Alan Judd and Heather Vogell
, August 15, 2010, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Thousands of high school students vanished from the rolls of Atlanta Public Schools in the past eight years, often with few hints to where they went. Schools recorded many of them as “transfers” to other systems, at times without proof that the students hadn’t dropped out altogether. In 2008, a consultant to the district estimated recently, school officials couldn’t document the whereabouts of more than one-third of the district’s departed students. The mass exodus from Atlanta’s high schools may be the primary reason for one of the district’s proudest academic achievements: a dramatic increase in its graduation rate, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. District officials boast that the rate of students getting diplomas within four years has risen 30 percentage points since 2002. But the rate’s only surge, from 43 percent to 72 percent, came between 2003 and 2005, the Journal-Constitution’s analysis of state data found. During that time, the district removed from its rolls about 30 percent of all pupils in grades nine through 12 – roughly 16,000 students…”