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Since You Asked: Graduation rate reflects only public school students Sunday Oct 30, 2016 at 12:01 AM We are astonished at the poor high school graduation rate for Oregon. Does this poor graduation rate include all high school students, or does it exclude private and charter schools? — Ken E., Eagle Point Ken, our 2014-15 graduation rate may have been the third worst in the nation, but on the bright side, it was two percentage points higher than the 2013-14 graduation rate. The state’s graduation rate jumped from about 72 percent in 2013-14 to about 74 percent in 2014-15, but we won’t know how the Class of 2016 fared until the state publishes those results in January. However, state officials are optimistic that the graduation rate will continue to rise thanks to investments made in full-day kindergarten, career and technical education, early learning, and supports for specific student groups, namely English Language Learners, Native Americans and blacks, said Tricia Yates, an Oregon Department of Education spokeswoman, in an email. Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Salam Noor also established a Graduation Advisory Committee to review state and national graduation data, discuss barriers to improving the graduation rate, explore best practices and share strategies for improvement, Yates said. Oregon’s graduation rate recognizes only public school students — this includes charter school students — who graduated from high school in four years with either a regular or modified diploma. Neither private school students nor home-school students are calculated into the state’s graduation rate, Yates said. ODE does not collect data on private or home-schooled students and has no way of knowing the outcomes of students who either never attended public schools or transferred out of the public school system, Yates said. Furthermore, ODE can only provide rough estimates as to the number of home-school and private school students by subtracting the number of students enrolled in the public school system from census estimates of children ages 5 to 19. “Typically, our enrollment is about 75-77 percent of the census' estimated, school-aged population in Oregon,” she said. For ODE’s comprehensive manual — some fun weekend reading — on how the graduation rate is calculated, see www.ode.state.or.us/wma/data/schoolanddistrict/students/docs/cohort-graduation-rate-policy-manual_201415.pdf. — Send questions to “Since You Asked,” Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; by fax to 541-776-4376; or by email to [email protected]. To see a collection of columns, go to mailtribune.com/youasked. We’re sorry, but the volume of questions received prevents us from answering all of them.