Two public school districts in Bartholomew County saw a slight dip in their graduation rates last year, mirroring a statewide trend.
The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. saw 88.7 percent of its seniors graduate in 2017, while 98 percent of students graduated from Hauser High School, according to the Indiana Department of Education. The new graduation statistics reflect a 1.3 percentage point drop from the prior year for BCSC and a 2 percentage point reduction for Hauser.
Graduation rates reported for BCSC and the Flat Rock-Hawcreek School Corp. are higher than the statewide graduation rate in 2017 of 87.2 percent, which fell from 89.1 percent in 2016.
Graduation rates for 2017 at both BCSC high schools, which contribute to the district’s overall score, dropped slightly in a year’s time:
- Columbus North’s rate of 88.9 percent was down from 90.1 percent.
- Columbus East’s rate of 88.5 percent was down from 89.9 percent.
School district officials will evaluate the graduation rate data to determine where improvements can be made, BCSC Superintendent Jim Roberts said.
Despite the one-year decline, the Columbus-based district’s graduation rate is still 3.5 percentage points higher than it was four years earlier.
“In any given year, you will have ebbs and flows in the rate, and you hope that over time the trend is a positive one. And that has been the case for Bartholomew Consolidated Schools at both North and East,” Roberts said.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
