This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The good news is, the statewide high school graduation rate for Utah's public and charter schools has reached 85 percent. That's up a good clip over just the past five years, and within shouting distance of the state's goal of 90 percent by 2020.
The bad news is, that was the easy part.
The hopeful news is, the people at the top of the state's public education establishment know that.
The word from the Utah Board of Education Tuesday was that the commendable increase in the state grad rate since 2012, when it was 78 percent, is no cause to declare victory.
As board spokesman Mark Peterson said, "The higher you get, the harder the push."
What that means is that there remains large achievement gaps across the state's various school districts, its rich and poor neighborhoods and its different ethnic groups.
The feedback from that data is, again, proof that state and local officials need to be aware that there are cohorts of Utah students who need more help. Which means more money, targeted to those areas where the gap is greatest.
At the top, 16 districts across Utah, and a handful of high-achieving charter schools have already met or exceeded the 90 percent target. On the other end, some schools and districts with higher proportions of low-income families or that cater to students who have fallen behind find their graduation rates languishing at 40 percent or below.
The fact that the grad rates for white and Asian students are slightly above the overall 85 percent is offset by figures that show the rate for, for example, Latino students is still only 74 percent. And for those who meet the definition of "economically disadvantaged," the 2016 rate is 75 percent, which is actually a tick down from the year before.
The practice of teasing out statistics for different ethnic groups and economic levels is perhaps the top accomplishment of George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.
Whatever the future brings for education, if a new Republican ascendency in Washington leads to a federal retreat from setting standards, this practice of disaggregation will remain essential to allowing educators, and the public, to measure the success of their schools.
State officials and education backers have set themselves a goal of having 66 percent of the state's adults achieving some post-secondary certification — bachelor's or associate's degree or trade certificate by 2020. And that's a goal that will remain out of reach as long as the high school graduation rate is held back by the state's ongoing, and unacceptable, achievement gap.