Miami-Dade improved its graduation rate, but is falling behind other large districts

The long-awaited graduation rates for the 2018-19 school year made little noise at Miami-Dade County Public Schools headquarters on Thursday, where the graduation rate increased just 0.2 percentage points to 85.6%.

Progress has slowed since the state’s largest school district — and fourth largest district in the nation — celebrated a nearly five percentage point increase in its graduation rate last year. Now, Miami-Dade is falling behind other large districts in graduating students within four years of starting high school, according to data released by the Florida Department of Education.

Broward County leapfrogged over Miami-Dade this year, its graduation rate jumping from 84.3% to 86.2%. So did Duval County, which improved from 85.1% to 86.5%. The statewide graduation rate continued its steady ascent from 86.1% to 86.9%.

But it’s hard to maintain those rates the higher they climb. Palm Beach County saw a tiny decrease from 87.2% to 87.1% and Orange County dropped from 88.9% to 88.4%. Monroe County also dipped from 86.4% to 86%.

Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho chalked the district’s modest increase up to stabilization and a more rigorous language arts test on the Florida Standards Assessments and SAT exams, which can be used to graduate in lieu of a passing standardized test.

“I’m always hoping for more but I’m not disappointed by the fact that we did not regress,” Carvalho said. “We improved more modestly than we have in the past.”

“You don’t expect to grow by 5% year after year,” he added. “I think everybody would question that.”

But he placed a significant amount of blame on the district’s charter schools. He said district-managed schools graduated 89.2% of students, while charter schools’ rates were 68.6%.

Last year’s graduation rate for district-managed schools was 89%. One in every five students in the school district attends a charter school.

“The room for improvement lies with charters for suppressing district-wide graduation rates,” he said.

Miami-Dade also makes the case that it has a higher population of students with challenges compared to other districts. Almost 70% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch and 20% are English language learners in a district of 350,000 students

“We celebrate it, but we recognize there is plenty of room for improvement,” Carvalho said.

In Broward, traditional high schools graduated 95.1% of students compared to 68.1%, up from 58%, in charter schools.

This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 12:05 PM.