Lincoln County School District Graduation Rates on the Rise
NEWPORT, OR — January 24, 2019 – Today, the Oregon Department of Education shared all graduation and dropout rates across the state and for each school district. The Lincoln County School District showed an overall graduation rate of 81.99% for students in a four-year cohort (those who started together as Freshman in the Fall of 2014-15). Lincoln County School District’s rate of graduation went from 77.5 to 81.99% an increase of 4.24%. Overall, state averages have gone up by 2.03% so our district is following state trends.
Results for each high school 4-year cohort rates: Taft 7-12 is 78.90% an increase of 1.76%; Toledo is at 79.25% an increase of 7.25%; Newport is 83.83% an increase of 4.17%; Waldport High School is 93.88% an increase of 16.38%. The charter high schools Siletz Valley Early College Academy is 84.62% an increase of 3.67%; Eddyville Charter School is 100% an increase of 5.88%, and Lincoln City Career Tech is 52.38% a decrease of 14.29%. The Lincoln County School District has been on an upward climb for 4 years now.
According to Superintendent Dr. Karen Gray, “We are showing improvement in graduation rates that pretty much correlate with the state percentages and population growth. We attribute the rises in rates to a large focus of creating a caring school culture last year, along with other supports we’ve put in place district-wide such as graduation coaches, increased career and technical learning opportunities and implementation of AVID (advancement via individual determination) in all our schools.”
As the new Superintendent, Dr. Gray sees room for growth, “We need to improve support systems for our homeless students and our English Learners (those students who are not proficient in English during high school). I want to make sure that all of our students are able to read, write, do math and have career or college choices upon graduation.”
Dropout rates for the Lincoln County School District are at 2%, which means that of 1,700 students in the 2014-15 4-year cohort, 34 did not complete the requirements to graduate. The state average is 3.55%. The largest number of dropouts in LCSD are among those who are experiencing homelessness and those who are not proficient in English during high school. LCSD identified 280 as homeless and 14 of those dropped out which means 5% did not finish and of the 58 identified as English Learners 4 dropped out equating to 6.90%.