VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Virginia Beach City Public Schools has reached a record-high on-time graduation rate for an 11th consecutive year.
The school district also had a dropout rate decreased to 3 percent, which is the lowest on record. VBCPS also outperformed Virginia's rates of 91.5 percent for on-time graduation rate and 5.6 percent for dropouts.
"These remarkable numbers are testament to the hard work of our teachers, counselors, coaches and families who are invested in educating the whole child," said VBCPS Superintendent Dr. Aaron Spence. "This VBCPS community endeavors every single day to meet the social and emotional needs of our students, while providing the best transformational learning experience in Virginia. We are committed to sending young learners across that graduation stage prepared for whatever calls to them, be it college, the military or a career."
The on-time graduation rate is based on the percentage of students in a graduation cohort who earned a Board of Education-approved diploma within four years of entering high school.
In addition to these new overall records, a closer look at VBCPS data reveals impressive gains in key areas:
- African-American students' graduation rate increased to 92.4%-a 2.1 percentage-point increase from 2018 and the largest gain of any VBCPS demographic group. Additionally, the dropout rate for African-American students continued declining from 7.0% in 2015 to 4.0% in 2019.
- Students with disabilities as a group continued to steadily increase their graduation rate, which now stands at 91.7%.
- Female students as a group continued to increase their graduation rate from 94.6% in 2018 to 96.1% in 2019.
- Nine of the division's 12 high schools had graduation rates above 90%. The remaining three high schools have graduation rates near the 90% mark, ranging from approximately 88.7% to 89.8%.
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