Grad Rate Woes in Louisville

Education Week newspaper (subscription) points to a new report on graduation rate problems in the nation’s major cities.


Among the unsettling findings, the high school graduation rate in Louisville actually dropped slightly by 0.3 points from 1995 to 2005. While Louisville’s 63.4 percent graduation rate in 2005 was higher than most other large cities, this is partly due to the urban-suburban makeup of the Jefferson County Public School system which creates an advantage over other purely urban cities around the nation.

Such a low rate means large numbers of students in the city's schools face a bleak future as adults.

Anyway, with Louisville not making any progress, we need to find out what other cities are doing that we aren’t. That includes looking at Southern city Virginia Beach where the graduation rate already is five points higher than Louisville’s and on the rise.