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But 50 percent accounts for just half of the city’s high school student population.
“I think any improvement is great but clearly we have a long way to go,” said Mary-Powel Thomas, president of District 15’s Community Education Council (CEC).
The entire state recorded a 67 percent four-year graduation rate in 2006.
“The statewide graduation rate has gone up only slightly and is unacceptably low,” said state Education Commissioner Richard Mills. “We need to act urgently now.”
Brooklyn Technical High School recorded the highest graduation rate in Brooklyn with 92 percent.
Several local high schools had graduation rates at less than 40 percent, including Automotive, Harry Van Arsdale, and Boys and Girls.
With a 26 percent graduation rate, ACORN High School for Social Justice had the second lowest rate in Brooklyn.
An analysis of the data posted on the state Education Department’s website, www.nysed.gov, shows that racial disparities in student achievement still exist.
While the graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students increased, they remain lower than those for their white classmates.
The four-year graduation rate for Hispanic students rose four percent to 45 percent, and the rate for African-American students jumped three percent to 47 percent.
“The rate among black and Hispanic students is a disaster,” asserted Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.
Thomas said more must be done to encourage the city’s best teachers to work in struggling schools, many of which have large African-American and Hispanic student bodies.
“If you want to attract your highest quality teachers to your lowest performing schools, it would help to offer them more money,” she said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein have said they’d like to implement such a system.
Calling the graduation rate increases for African-American and Hispanic students “bright spots,” Mills asserted, “New York City has gained. But we still have far to go.”
Bloomberg said the figures “demonstrate that, as a result of the school reforms New York City has made, more students are graduating from our public schools than at any time in decades. Four- and five-year graduation rates have risen steadily and substantially during the past two years.”
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