At last week’s Okaloosa School Board workshop, Superintendent Marcus Chambers gave the board an update on the District’s graduation rate.
According to the Florida Department of Education, Okaloosa County has increased 6 percentage points in the past five years and currently stands at a 92.2% graduation rate.
- This is 2.1 percentage points above the state average, according to Chambers.
“Our goal in the Okaloosa County School District is to prepare our students to not only graduate from high school, but also to be prepared to successfully enter college, the military, or the workforce,” said Chambers.
Here’s how other counties in Northwest Florida ranked:
- Wakulla – 95.5%
- Leon – 94.0%
- Calhoun – 93.1%
- Walton – 91.4%
- Holmes – 90.8%
- Santa Rosa – 90.3%
- Bay – 90.2%
- Washington – 87.9%
- Escambia – 87%
- Gulf – 86.5%
- Jackson – 84.1%
- Gadsen – 82.7%
- Liberty – 82.6%
- Franklin – 74.4%
Federal regulations require each state to calculate a four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, which includes standard diplomas but excludes GEDs, both regular and adult, and special diplomas.
- The U.S. Department of Education (USED) adopted this calculation method in an effort to develop uniform, accurate, and comparable graduation rates across all states.
- The USED required states to begin calculating the adjusted cohort graduation rate in 2010-11.
- This graduation rate is currently used in Florida’s school accountability system in the school grades calculation.
As for the state, Florida’s high school graduation rate increased by 0.1 percentage points over the last year and has increased significantly during the past 18 years. The rate rose from 59.2 percent in 2003-04 to 90.1 percent in 2020-21, which is a 30.9 percentage-point increase.
