MCPS Has Highest Grad Rate for African American Males in Nation

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has the highest graduation rate for African American males among the nation’s largest school districts, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education released a report Wednesday entitled Black Lives Matter: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males. The report highlights opportunities, challenges, and data related to the education of African American male students across the country. While much of the report focuses on state performance and practices, it does include graduation rates for school districts with the largest African American male student enrollment. You can read that report here.

The report calculates the MCPS graduation rate for African American males at 74 percent—highest among districts with more than 10,000 African American male students. Cumberland County, North Carolina is second on the list with a graduation rate of 68 percent, followed by Guilford County, North Carolina (67 percent), Baltimore County (67 percent) and Fort Bend, Texas (60 percent). The African American male graduation rate nationally is 59 percent, according to the report.

The report also looks at the gap in graduation rate between African American males and white males. In MCPS, the gap is 17 percentage points, which is lower than the gap nationally (21 percentage points), according to the news release. It should be noted that, of the districts analyzed for this report, MCPS has the highest graduation rate for white students, at 91 percent, according to the report.

The Schott Foundation used 2011-2012 data for the district calculations. According to data released by the state of Maryland last month, the MCPS African American male graduation rate for 2014 was 81.9 percent. The graduation rate for MCPS white males was 93.7 percent, which means the gap is just under 12 percentage points.

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