Among the 50 states, West Virginia saw the fourth-largest increase in its four-year high school graduation rate from the 2012-13 school year to 2013-14, according to preliminary data released this week by the U.S. Department of Education.
The Mountain State saw its graduation rate increase by 3.1 percentage points to 84.5 percent, putting it at 25th in the nation for 2013-14. The state's students labeled "economically disadvantaged" by the federal education department saw their graduation rate increase 6.4 percentage points to 80.1 percent.
Last week, West Virginia Board of Education members heard State Schools Superintendent Michael Martirano present his five-year strategic plan, which calls for a 90 percent graduation rate by 2019-20. According to the data from the federal education department, only Iowa and Nebraska had such high graduation rates in 2013-14.
State Department of Education spokeswoman Kristin Anderson didn't provide the Gazette-Mail numbers Tuesday on last school year's statewide graduation rate, saying the data isn't final. West Virginia's 84.5 percent rate for 2013-14 rounds up to Martirano's goal for last school year of 85 percent. The goal for this school year is 86 percent.
Michele Blatt, chief accountability officer for the state education department, said several initiatives contributed to the increased graduation rate. She highlighted the creation of the state's Early Warning System, which tracks 45 different indicators - the most important being attendance, behavior and grades - to identify students who at risk of dropping out.
Blatt also noted the state increased its dropout age from 16 to 17 in the past few years, and in 2011, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin provided innovation-zone funding for dropout prevention programs.
"It really is about determining which individual students are at risk and providing interventions to the students," Blatt said. "And schools and counties really bought into that."
Anderson said West Virginia requires among the most high school credits to graduate in the nation.
States who increased their graduation rates more than West Virginia were Oregon, where the rate increased 3.3 percentage points to stand at 72 percent; Alabama, where the rate increased 6.3 percentage points to equal 86.3 percent; and Delaware, where the rate increased 6.6 percentage points to total 87 percent.
The Mountain State also saw a 4 percentage point increase in black students' graduation rate, which rose to 79 percent. That's compared to an 84.7 percent graduation rate for the Mountain State's white students in 2013-14, which increased 2.8 percentage points from 2012-13.
All of West Virginia's neighboring states also saw overall graduation rate increases, save for Pennsylvania, which saw no change to its 85.5 percent rate, and Ohio, which saw its rate drop 0.4 percentage points to stand at 81.8 percent.
The graduation rate data the federal education department released this week is specifically the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate, which, according to the department's National Center for Education Statistics, is the number of first-time ninth graders who earn a regular high school diploma within four school years. The rate includes students who transfer in after ninth grade, and excludes students who transfer out, emigrate to another country, or die.
The federal education department hasn't yet released the nationwide graduation rate for 2013-14; it was 81 percent in 2012-13.
Martirano's strategic plan also includes one-year goals for increasing the percentage of students deemed "proficient" on the state's General Summative Assessment, which is mostly comprised of the new Smarter Balanced standardized tests given in the spring. Smarter Balanced is aligned to the state's Common Core-based math and English/language arts standards.
The state superintendent aims to raise by 5 percentage points this school year the portion of students at proficient or above in all grades whose scores are reported to the federal education department: 3-8 and 11.
For English/language arts, that would bring all those grade levels to near or above a 50 percent proficiency rate. In math - where only about a quarter of West Virginia students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades were deemed proficient or higher last school year, and where only a fifth of 11th graders were - a 5 percentage point increase would still leave a long way for those grade levels to go.
Martirano also aims to reduce the portion of third graders deemed "below standard" in a category of the English/language arts test that Anderson said measures whether students are able to "read closely and analytically to comprehend a range of increasingly complex literary and informational texts." The state superintendent wants the "below standard" percentage to drop from 36 percent last school year to 20 percent in 2019-20.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.