Shannon's Window: Making the grade on graduation

  • December 30, 2013
  • /   Shannon Nickinson
  • /   education
Whatever is in the water at West Florida High School, let’s bottle it. West Florida opened in 2001 and blends technical education with core curriculum instruction. For nine years has been an A school, a grade that escapes even Pensacola High School, home of the vaunted International Baccalaureate program. It is also the Escambia high school with the best graduation rate. In the 2012-2013 school year 91.62 percent of the white students and 89 percent of the black students graduated. Whatever the secret sauce is there, other high schools need to swipe the recipe. Because graduation rates elsewhere in the county are quite frankly nothing to write home about. Especially for African-American students. The graduation rate has improved greatly across the state and the school district in the last 10 years. According to Florida Department of Education data, in the 2002-2003 school year, 73 percent of white students and an appalling 51 percent of black students graduated from Escambia County high schools. By 2007-2008, those numbers were up to 83 percent for white students and 61.5 for black students. In 2012-2013, the graduation rate was 71.17 percent for white students and 51.4 percent for black students. Even as the overall numbers rose, the racial gap that was present in 2002 persists in 2012. Last school year, at every high school in the county save Pine Forest, white students graduate at a higher rate than black students do, usually by at least 10 percentage points, and often by much more. The gap is not new; it is has been there for years. The question is what are we prepared to do about it? And how much longer are we prepared to let it linger? Not every child can be saved. But when we wonder why we can’t get ahead as a community, why we remain the poorest metropolitan area of the state, this data might be a clue about where we are falling short of the mark. The rising tide is not lifting all boats in Escambia County. Some boats aren’t even getting out of the harbor.    
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