AURORA | Graduation rates at Aurora Public Schools have slightly increased in recent years, but still sit well below state and national averages, according to new numbers tabulated and released by APS earlier this month.
Only 59 percent of APS students who started the ninth grade in the 2011-12 school year have since graduated, according to data provided by APS and compiled by the Colorado Department of Education. That number pales in comparison to the 2013-14 statewide graduation rate of 77.3 percent.
Updated, statewide numbers for the 2014-15 school year are expected to be released Jan. 21, according to Megan McDermott, assistant director of communications for the CDE.
Despite the lingering gap between APS graduates and their peers across Colorado, the latest APS graduation rate is still 13.5 percent higher than it was in 2010, which is encouraging to an administration that has continued to double down on resources and methods intended to keep kids in school, according to Rico Munn, superintendent of APS.
“We’re very excited about the trend that we’re seeing now,” Munn said of the latest numbers.
Munn added that the APS graduation rate is in fact about six percentage points higher than the rate calculated by the state, although the higher number cannot be officially recognized due to Department of Education calculation procedures. If APS included students in the district’s Accelerating Students through Concurrent Enrollment, or ASCENT, program, the APS graduation rate for the 2014-15 school year would be 64.7 percent, according to the APS calculations.
“(ASCENT students) are still, from the state’s viewpoint, seen as high school students,” Munn said. “So they’re not in the graduation rate, but we view it as a success.”
Available to APS students since 2010, the ASCENT program allows students to concurrently enroll in college courses while technically still in high school at the expense of a public school district. Qualified students begin to accrue college credits their senior year of high school and take two semesters of college classes the following year, which is seen by the state as a fifth year of high school. Because the district is paying the students way, they are still considered to be high school students and cannot be factored into annual graduation rates — despite meeting all of the requirements.
“These are students who have met graduation requirements and would have received a diploma, but because they’re ASCENT we’re not allowed to give them one,” said Lisa Escarcega, chief accountability and research officer for APS. “They walk at graduation and are then given a blank folder, but they are not counted as a graduate on our records until they complete that fifth year of college coursework.”
There were 142 ASCENT students in APS during the 2014-15 school year, which is more than any other district in the state, according to APS officials. Denver Public Schools boasted the second highest number of ASCENT enrollees in the 2013-14 school year — the latest available data for schools outside of APS — with 78 students.
APS has only added about one ASCENT student per year since 2013, and Escarcega said that she doesn’t expect the program to grow much more going forward due to budget caps tied to the program.
However, she said that with the help of organizations like Attendance Works and Zero Dropouts, both of which aim to encourage students to stay in school and showcase how truancy can negatively impact those around them, she expects graduation rates to continue to improve in the next two or three years.
“I would say that what our (efforts) all have in common is student monitoring,” Escarcega said. “Whether it’s with the truancy specialist or looking at a student for The Rebound program, it is really being able to more closely monitor, follow up and intervene in a more proactive manner than we previously were able to.”
The 2014-15 dropout rate at APS was 4.4 percent. That’s a significant reduction from the 2005-06 school year when the drop out rate was 9.9 percent, according to APS documents.