New data: only 10% of Philly students earn a degree

Posted by on October 10, 2010

Only 1 in 10 city students earn a degree: report

The Philadelphia Public School Notebook has reported that new data compiled by School District researchers shows that just one out of 10 students who entered a Philadelphia public high school in 1999 had earned a two-or four-year college degree 10 years later.

The report was based on tracking a cohort of 12,230 students who were first-time ninth graders in District schools in 1999.

The Notebook noted that as low as the degree completion rate is, it is similar to that in other big city urban school districts.

The research showed that only 1,258 students, or 10.3 percent, had graduated from college by the summer of 2009.  It showed that 48 percent of the students got a high school diploma in four years, with another ten percent getting a diploma in five or six years.  Only one in four enrolled in college within a year of graduation, and fewer than half actually earned a degree by 2009.

Lori Shorr, the director of the Mayor’s education office, encouraged the School District to gather and release the data.

“To me it’s about having an agreed-upon sense of the reality,” she said. “Depending on where you sit inside any place in the city you have a different opinion. This gives you a big picture of what the number looks like.”

Kati Haycock of Education Trust, a national advocacy group that focuses on achievement gaps between White and Asian and Black and Latino students, called the report “pretty terrifying, if you assume that young people who don’t complete a postsecondary credential will find it hard not just initially but for the rest of their lives to find a job that can support a family.”

To view the Notebook article, go here.

http://thenotebook.org/october-2010/102930/new-data-only-10-philly-students-earn-degree