Scott GabrielThis post will take a quick look at graduation rates at public high schools in Lancaster County. The data comes from the 2015-2016 Pennsylvania 4-Year Cohort Graduation Rate tables and the National Center for Education Statistics.Below is an interactive map of Lancaster County’s public high schools. The schools are indicated by the circles on the map. A larger circle indicates a relatively higher graduation rate and the blue color scale represents the total number of graduates, with lighter blue indicating relatively fewer graduates and a darker blue representing a higher number of graduates. The map also has 2017 per-person income by zip code layered in to provide additional insight. The wealthiest zip codes are in the areas north of Lancaster city.
If it looks like McCaskey Campus is missing from the map, it’s because the 100 % graduation rate at La Academia Partnership Charter School causes the circle to overlap it. If you zoom in on the city you will see data for both McCaskey and Phoenix Academy.
Should Phoenix Academy Be Used in the Comparison?
The next chart shows a comparison of graduation rates and the percent of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch among the high schools. The schools are sorted from left to right by lowest graduation rate to the highest. At just a 65% graduation rate, Phoenix Academy is the worst performing public school in the county. In fact, according to an LNP article, a social worker described the school as “more like a detention center” than a school. The article also describes Phoenix Academy as an alternative school intended to help older students with limited credits graduate.
If we throw out Phoenix Academy and compare the more “traditional” public high schools, Columbia High School stands out as a particularly poor performing school. Its graduation rate is just 73%. No other public high school in the county is below 85% graduation rate. With the limited data used in this analysis, it’s impossible to determine the causes of Columbia’s poor performance, but it would certainly make for an interesting future post.
Another striking data point in the chart is the 99.9% of McCaskey students who receive free or reduced lunch. When I first saw that number I was shocked. Since McCaskey serves virtually all of Lancaster City (check out this map of Lancaster school district boundaries) does that mean that every family in the city with the means to do so sends their children to private schools? Luckily, the answer is no. It turns out the Lancaster city school district qualifies for the Community Eligibility Provision, which “allows a school to provide free lunch to all of its students even if they don’t qualify”.
The inspiration for this post came from the findings in my previous post that showed large gaps in high school graduation rates and median family incomes between the counties and cities of south-central PA counties. I concluded that a good starting point towards reducing those gaps would be to focus on improving the educational attainment of city students. The focus should be on policies and programs that are scientifically supported to improve education outcomes. An excellent resource can be found at the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps website. Among the programs listed on that site are:
- Alternative high schools for at-risk students
- Attendance intervention for chronically absent students
- Career and technical education (CTE)