The Duval County School district is celebrating a roughly 2 percent increase in its graduation rate over the previous year.
In this past school year, Duval’s graduation rate increased to 78.8 percent
The state average also rose from 77.9 percent to 80.7 percent.
All Duval high schools improved their rates, except for Paxon, which fell a fraction of a percentage point to 99.4, but still remains in the top one percent.
“There is no data point that I think is more relevant and important and indicative of the health of the school district than graduation rate,” said Duval Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. “Our job as a school district is to take children wherever they’re at, at whatever grade level we receive them and make sure they graduate in four years.”
The most improved school was Ed White High, gaining more-than 12 percentage points. At a 67.2 percent rate in 2014-15, it was the worst in the district. This past year it rose to 79.8 percent.
The school with the lowest graduation rate is Ribault with 78 percent graduating.
Darnell-Cookman and Stanton both had 100 percent of students graduating.
Duval is a “Big 7” school district, which encompasses seven Florida school districts similar in size and demographics. For the second year in a row, the district ranked No. 1 in its African-American graduation rates.
But overall, the district fell from fourth to sixth place out of the seven.
Reporter Lindsey Kilbride can be reached at lkilbride@wjct.org, 904-358-6359 or on Twitter at@lindskilbride.
