By Mark Scott
Albany, NY – The State Education Department is out with a report on high school graduation rates.
Statewide, 72 percent of students who started ninth grade in 2001 had graduated as of June 2006. The graduation rate for students who began the ninth grade in 2002, and graduated within the prescribed four year period, was 67 percent.
Education Commissioner Richard Mills says the graduation rates are still "unacceptably low." He says wealthier suburban school districts seem to have better rates than the state's urban districts.
"This disparity narrows somewhat by the fifth and sixth years," Mills said. "It illustrates what some school principals have told me that some children simply need more than four years."
As of last June, just 51 percent of Buffalo high school students had graduated after four years. When adding students who spent a fifth year in high school, Buffalo's graduation rate increased to 58 percent.
City Honors had the highest graduation rate of any Buffalo school while Grover Cleveland, Riverside and South Park had among the lowest.
Details on the graduation rates of all high schools in Western New York are available at the State Education Department web site.