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Colorado sees graduation rates dip slightly year over year during pandemic

Eagle County Schools saw a 1% decrease in its four-year graduation rate

Sophia Rinn gives the senior address during Eagle Valley High School’s 2021 graduation ceremony.
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive

The class of 2021 was the first graduating class that finished high school after a full year of pandemic learning, which included balancing remote learning, hybrid schedules, masks, changing activity schedules and more. Despite the challenges of last school year, recently released data from the Colorado Department of Education shows that while there were some changes, students still graduated at a similar rate to previous years.

The state’s overall four-year graduation rate dropped only slightly — with 81.7% graduating compared with 81.9% in 2020. According to the department, this is the first time the rate has dipped in over a decade.

“We know how tough it was for everyone last school year due to the challenges brought on by the pandemic with schools going to remote learning and others offering hybrid models,” said Katy Anthes, Colorado’s education commissioner, in a release. “It is a relief that the graduation rate is nearly the same as it was the previous year. With the state’s dropout rate also nearly unchanged, it is a concrete display of the dedication and determination of Colorado’s students, parents and teachers, especially during these tough times.”



Similarly, Eagle County Schools’ graduation rate only saw a slight drop, with 83.8% of seniors graduating in 2021 compared with 84.8% in 2020 and 84.7% in 2019. While not a significant drop, it is the first time the district has posted a decrease in this rate since 2017. In 2017, its four-year graduation rate dipped to 70.8% from 79.4% in 2016.

The district has been steadily increasing its graduation rate since that last dip in 2017. It saw a significant increase in 2019, when the graduation rate increased to 84.7%, up from 74.9% in 2018.

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“We have worked hard to create systems of support as well as credit recovery systems. By identifying and working with students who are in danger of failing, we are able to help them stay on track for graduation,” wrote Dr. Katie Jarnot, the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. “We started using Edgenuity, which is a dynamic resource to provide credit recovery and summer school in 2020. We used it during the school year in spring of 2021, and continue to use it for summer school. This has helped us to enable students to focus on the standards they did not meet in order to gain the credits they need.”

Equity and graduation rates

Despite the pandemic, Eagle County Schools’ graduation rate remained relatively steady in 2021.
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive

In recent years, Eagle County Schools has made a district-wide push to increase equity across its schools. A main goal within this is to ensure that demographic factors — such as race, gender and socioeconomic status — are not predictors of academic success, including graduation.

“We continue to work to make sure that student outcomes are not determined by demographics,” Jarnot wrote. “We want all students to have the same opportunities to succeed.”

Across its demographics, there are still gaps in graduation rates between genders and races at Eagle County Schools. In 2021, white students had a graduation rate of 92.4% and Hispanic students (which make up 51.7% of its student body) had a graduation rate of 76.7%. Between genders, female students had a graduation rate of 87.1% and male students graduated at 81.3%.

Eagle County Schools’ Hispanic male students were one of the only groups whose graduation rate increased from 2020 to 2021. In 2021, Hispanic males had a four-year graduation rate of 74.5% compared with 70.5% the previous year. This is also higher than the statewide graduation rate for Hispanic male students, which was 69.1% in 2021.

The district’s white male students were the group that saw one of the biggest drops, with a four-year graduation rate of 89% in 2021 compared with 92.4% in 2020.

In order to close these gaps, as well as prevent dropouts, Eagle County Schools provides students with a number of systems of support.

“We have had a system for many years that tracks our ‘at risk’ students using these factors. We also rely on district-wide testing, especially in our lower grades, to identify and progress monitor students who are struggling academically,” Jarnot said. “We have Multi-Tiered Systems of Support at all schools to support students academically and socially-emotionally. We are currently focusing on interventions at the secondary level and have made some great improvements. We will continue to support with curricular resources and professional learning.”

Jarnot added that some specific ways the district helps students graduate and complete high school is by providing multiple pathways with its post-secondary readiness team, provide AVID (college and career readiness) in its secondary schools, provide students with access to counselors to help plan their pathways including access to prevention coordinators that work with students on at-risk behaviors and issues.

“Both high schools have created positions to help support at-risk students, although these have been difficult to fill. We have robust credit recovery programs, and we have an alternative school, (Red Canyon High School), to support students who are not finding success in the traditional high school model,” she added.

These at-risk factors, Jarnot said, go beyond classroom performance and include discipline, attendance and social-emotional challenges.

Different schools, different metrics

The Red Canyon Class of 2021 graduates in May.
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive

Perhaps the greatest differences between graduation rates come between the district’s high schools. For the class of 2021, while Battle Mountain, Eagle Valley and Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy all have four-year graduation rates that exceed 90% — 93.4%, 93.6% and 100%, respectively — Red Canyon has a graduation rate of 36%.

According to Troy Dudley, the principal at Red Canyon High School, the reason that the school’s rate is significantly lower is that it is designated as an alternative education campus by the state of Colorado and as such, relies on different metrics for its accountability process. Instead, the state rates the school for academic achievement, academic growth and post-secondary and workforce readiness as well as student engagement.

This, Dudley said, makes it complicated to compare Red Canyon to traditional high schools.

“It is still one of the highest performing AECs in the state, and we believe it is benefited by having a campus both up and down valley,” Dudley wrote in an email.

“For example, instead of the normal graduation rate, which is calculated on a 4-year schedule. Red Canyon High School is rated by the state using a completion rating,” he added. “This scale includes students that graduated in their 5th, 6th or 7th year of high school. For this metric, Red Canyon rates as ‘exceeds’ when compared to other AEC schools. On the last School Performance Framework, RCHS had a 70% completion rate.”

In comparison to other alternative education campuses, Dudley said this completion rate was “impressive.”

Red Canyon’s main area of concern when it comes to its performance rating is its drop-out rate. The school, Dudley said, has taken steps to address and focus on factors that lead its students to drop out. This includes a student that is habitually truant prior to dropping out, a student that is behind on credit, a student that is older and no longer is willing to attend classes, or a student that needs to work and can no longer attend a traditional schedule.

There are a number of ways that Red Canyon is working to prepare its students for life after high school, including providing multi-tiered systems of support, offering additional credits to catch up, including a credit recovery program, offering a high school equivalency diploma program to help students that are far behind on credit obtain a GED, and by encouraging and supporting students that need to work and attend school at the same time.

Moving forward

The district is hopeful that its efforts to support students, especially those who are considered at-risk, will not just keep graduation rates steady, but hopefully help them increase in future years. However, Jarnot wrote that graduation rates don’t show the entire picture of students and their success.

“Our goal is to help all students to be prepared for whatever they want to do beyond high school,” she wrote, adding that it does so through a number of programs including CareerX, dual enrollment and AP classes, Pathways in Technology Early College High School, Individual Career and Academic Planning and more.

While the class of 2021 did not see any significant impacts to graduation rates, schools and students have certainly been impacted by the pandemic. According to Jarnot, we won’t have a full picture on how the pandemic impacted students for many years to come.

“Education has been disrupted for all students. Until our current kindergarteners graduate, we will probably be seeing the results of the pandemic,” Jarnot said. “It is also important to remember that it is not just our students in our district, but students across the state, the nation and the planet. We feel lucky that we’ve been able to have students learning in person more than many other districts. By being proactive with interventions and support we can continue to move students forward.”


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