Florida's high school graduation rate jumped by 3 percent points to a record 76.3 percent this year, state education officials said Friday, but a critic said the state is still a "dropout factory."
Officials credited the improvement largely to minority students. The rate for blacks increased 4.1 percentage points to 64.9 percent. The rate for Hispanics grew by 4.5 percentage points to 72.1 percent. Those increases compare to a 2.3 percentage point gain for non-Hispanic whites to 83.1 percent.
"Florida's education system continues to be a rising star in our nation, and our teachers and school leaders should be commended," Gov. Charlie Crist said in a statement. "Our graduation rate is one of many recent measurements showing the progress we are making."
Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith called the results "encouraging" although "there is still much more work to be done."
The 2009 figure is up even though Florida this year stopped counting GED recipients in the calculation.
Not everyone, though, was celebrating.
"It's sort of absurd to uncork champagne," said state Sen. Dan Gelber, a longtime critic of the state's school system. "By every study we're a dropout factory." READ FULL STORY
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