Grad rates drop in Idaho

High school graduations rates are on the decline in the Gem State, according to a report released Wednesday by the State Department of Education.

The rate from the 2013-2014 school year dropped almost 7 percent in comparison from the previous year.

In Idaho, 77.3 percent of students earned their high school diploma in four years.
District 93 Director of School Improvement Scott Woolstenhulme said the decline can be easily explained.

“However many students you start as a freshman , they’re tracking the students throughout their entire high-school career,” said Woolstenhulme “Before, we would have a set number of freshmen. As they moved in and moved out, it would balance itself out. But in this case, they’re actually looking at specific students and following them all the way through, so if a student ends up transferring out of state and we don’t have record of them graduating in another state, even if they get a GED, we can’t count them. So there’s lots of factors in it that cause us to see the drop in the few percent it has.”

Special-needs students who earned a diploma under adapted guidelines were also not included in the study.