Graduation RatesData :

In order to ensure all students are successfully completing high school and to identify strategies to keep students in school it is necessary to measure graduation rates. As the quality of Minnesota education data improves MDE is able to provide increasingly detailed information. Accurate end status information about students allows us to know each year how many graduated, dropped out, continued past their senior year, are unknown or stopped their education across any school in the state.

Over the years MDE has made adjustments to how these data are reported. In an effort to provide consistency we are continuing to publish counts of status end codes for graduates and drops from 1991 - 2007. These are raw count data and are in fact used to compute graduation rates or completion study information.

From 1996-2001 we published completion studies. These can be found in archives for Graduation rates.

Beginning with the class of 200 3 MDE is publishing four different graduation rates to allow educators and policy makers to view data from a number of perspectives. The National Governor's Association Rate is computed based on an expanding and contracting cohort that includes graduates, drops, continuing and unknown students. The National Center for Education Statistics rate currently used for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) computations is included and is based solely on graduates and drops. There are two new completion studies; the first shows students who started at a particular school or district and what their status was anywhere in the state four years later; the second completion study shows students who started with a particular school or district and four years later were still associated with that district. For additional information please refer to the section links on the right for Graduation Rate Resources or Graduation Completion Rate Descriptions.