OUSD Continues Upward Trajectory with Improving High School Graduation Rates

Oakland - Oakland Unified School District is celebrating the news that the 2017-18 graduation rates show strong progress over the previous year’s, which had already shown dramatic improvement. Four OUSD high schools now show four-year cohort graduation rates of 91% or higher. Overall, the District’s four-year cohort graduation rate increased 2.8% percentage points to 73.5% over 2016-17’s rate of 70.7%.

The schools with the highest graduation rates are MetWest High School at 97.6% and Coliseum College Prep Academy (CCPA) at 96.9%. CCPA showed an increase of 5.7 percentage points from 2016-17. Those two schools had no cohort dropouts in 2018. The other two schools that have above a 91% graduation rate are Life Academy at 92.6% (which was a 4.9 percentage point increase) and Madison Park Academy at 91.4% -- just its second graduating class since becoming a 6-12 school. Three of those schools are our combined middle and high schools, with grades 6-12: CCPA, Life Academy, and Madison Park Academy.

Two more schools have graduation rates close to or above 85%: Oakland Tech at 88.9% and Skyline High at 84.8%. One high school saw by far the best improvement and that’s Street Academy, which went from a 33.3% cohort graduation rate in 2016-17 to 63.3% in 17-18. That’s an increase of 30 percentage points, or a near doubling of the school’s previous rate.

Other schools that saw significant improvements in their graduation rates were Oakland High, which increased 8.6 percentage points, from 72.4% to 81.0%, Skyline High with a 7 percentage point increase, from 77.8% to 84.8%, Dewey Academy with its 5.5 percentage point increase, from 40.6% to 46.1% and Castlemont High which rose 5.1 percentage points, from 64.8% to 69.9%.

Oakland High had the highest cohort graduation rate in the District for African American students -- 89.9%, with African American female students graduating at a record-setting 93.8% rate. District-wide, African American male students increased by 4.3 percentage points, from 65.3% to 69.6%.

The Pacific Islander graduation rate increased from 61.8% in 2016-17 to 81.8% in 2017-18. That’s a 20 percentage point increase. Latino female students improved by 6.3 percentage points, going from 67.4% in 2016-17 to 73.7% in 2017-18.  And Special Education students had a 4 percentage point increase from 57.9% to 61.9%.

Last school year’s numbers follow the 2016-17 school year, when the graduation rate District-wide surpassed 70% for the first time in recent history. And now, overall, the District has a 73.5% graduation rate. “These numbers clearly show the work our students, staff and families put in is paying big dividends,” said OUSD Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell. “We also have powerful evidence that the programs and supports we have in place at high schools across the District are working. I am especially heartened to see the improvements among our students of color. A 20 percentage point increase among Pacific Islander students is remarkable. And nearly doubling the graduation rate at Street Academy is outstanding. We look forward to continuing this work to keep the graduation rates rising for all young people of Oakland.”