Using Extended-Year Graduation Rates to Measure Student Success

Posted by on August 29, 2011

The American Youth Policy Forum, Gateway to College National Network, and the National Youth Employment Coalition with support from numerous national youth-serving organizations have produced an issue brief to encourage states’ use of extended-year graduation rates in adequate yearly progress calculations and incorporation of these rates into their state accountability frameworks/systems. This brief, Making Every Diploma Count: Using Extended-Year Graduation Rates to Measure Student Success, aims to educate and inform states of the flexibilities that currently exist to use extended-year graduation rates as a policy mechanism to encourage schools and districts to continue to work with overage, under-credit students.

These rates provide for the inclusion of overage, under-credit students who take longer than the traditional four years to earn a high school diploma, but who successfully earn their credential in five or six years.  Extended-year graduation rates allow states to document increases in graduation rates compared to the traditional four-year measure and highlight the successful work of schools and districts to get struggling and out-of-school students back on-track to graduation.  The brief encourages states to calculate five- and six-year high school graduation rates to ensure that schools’ and districts’ efforts to serve struggling and off-track students are recognized and not discouraged.

Making Every Diploma Count: Using Extended-Year Graduation Rates to Measure Student Success, link to resource page and brief: http://www.aypf.org/projects/extendedgradrates.htm