Graduation Rates in Lynn Vary by Subgroup

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently reported both the graduation and dropout rates for the 2010-11 school year. As previously noted, Lynn's dropout rate decreased from 5.4% in 2009-10 to 4.6% in 2010-11 while the graduation rate increased from 68.5% to 68.6% during the same time period. This data indicates educational outcomes for the district as a whole, but what about individual subgroups? The most salient subgroups for our purposes are male, female, English language learner, special education, low income, African American/black, Asian, Hispanic and White.

[Note:] The graduation rate in Massachusetts is calculated by dividing the number of students who start 9th grade for the first time in the same year minus those who transfer out plus those who transfer in by the number of students in the cohort who graduate in four years or less. Thus the 2011 graduation rate statistic is related to students who started high school in the fall of 2007. 

In Lynn, the 2011 cohort group consisted of 1097 students. Females in this group were more likely to graduate in four years or less than males (74.8% graduation rate versus 63.5%). Similar gender disparities were seen in Danvers (92% vs. 84.3%), Revere (77.5% vs. 64%) and Salem (86.1% vs. 74.8%). The graduation rate for low income students was not substantially lower than the average for the city (65.8%) while English language learners and special education students did graduate at lower rates (59% and 48.1% respectively). 

At Lynn English, 80.2% of students starting 9th grade in 2007 graduated in four years or less. English language learners and special education students did graduate at a lower rate than the school average but at a higher rate than the district statistics (73.1%, 56.6%). Special education students did post the highest dropout and non-grad completer rates for all of the listed subgroups. Interestingly, of the racial/ethnic groups, Asian and African American/black students posted the highest graduation rates.

At Lynn Classical, 75.3% of students graduated in four years or less. There was an exactly 10 percentage points difference in grad rates between males and females while there was a 13 percentage point difference between white and Hispanic students. English language learners graduated from Classical at a slightly lower rate the Lynn English and the district average (55.1%); this group also had the highest rate of non-grad completers.

At Lynn Tech, 55.2% of students graduated in four years or less. Less than half of English language learners , special education and Asian students graduated in four years while white students had a 66.7% graduation rate. In this cohort group, nearly 12% were still in school (likely to complete a fifth year) while almost a quarter had dropped out. Four year dropout rates for all subgroups ranged between 20 - 33.3%.

Fecteau-Leary had a small cohort (56) of which 19.6% graduated within four years. Nearly 30% of these students dropped out while 30.4% of the students were still in school and 12.5% received a GED. This was the one school in Lynn where males were more likely to graduate than females (20% vs. 18.8%). The graduation rate for special education students did not differ greatly from the average for the school though this group did have the highest dropout rate.

*All Data Taken From: www.doe.mass.edu