Woodstock, Etowah Graduation Rates Fall

and high schools both fell backward this year in terms of graduation rate, according to new data released on Tuesday.

Woodstock came in at 81.4 percent compared to the previous 87.5 percent, and Etowah fell 3.1 percent to 82.7.

But, no Cherokee County high schools saw an increase with the new graduation rates that the Georgia Department of Education said is a more accurate method of calculation.

 came in at the bottom with 72.13 percent, while  lead the county with an 86.91 percent graduation rate. And  saw the most dramatic drop of 15.7 percent.

Tuesday, the Georgia DOE released new, four-year public high school graduation rates for the state, school districts and individual high schools. 

Graduation rates at all Cherokee County high schools and fell, a pattern that  Superintendent Frank Petruzielo attributes to the new calculation known as the adjusted cohort rate.

Petruzielo offered the following explanation in a prepared statement:

The cohort of students represented within this new calculation is the first to be negatively impacted by the new Graduation Rule, which requires more science, and the new Mathematics curriculum, which requires Support classes for students struggling in Math. Taken together, these two requirements make it more difficult for students to accumulate the new number of units needed for graduation. Additionally, special education students who graduated in their fifth or sixth year of high school counted in the old calculation while, under the new calculation, those students are not counted, even if they earn a regular diploma. Finally, under the old calculation, undocumented cases of students moving out of state were assumed to be transfers, based on anecdotal evidence (i.e., “neighbors said the family moved out of state”) and did not negatively impact graduation rate. Under the new calculation, written documentation is required for all transfers. If documentation is not obtained within a certain timeframe, the student is assumed to be a dropout. 

Previously, the calculation counted the number of students enrolled as a percentage of students graduating by the end of the summer of their fourth year in high school and did not account for transfers into the system. As such, the Cherokee County School District benefitted under this calculation due to high student growth rate experienced over the past several years.