Sterling Public School District

The graphs below show the percentages of high school students who graduated by obtaining a high school diploma or who completed a General Education Development / Diploma (GED). 

Four Year Graduation Rate: This graph shows the On-Time Graduation Rate, the percentage of students who graduated from high school within 4 years of entering the 9th grade. Students within the initial cohort who graduate, drop out, or continue beyond the fourth year of high school after entering the 9th grade are accounted for within the calculation, while students recorded as transferring to another school or district are removed from the calculation and do not count against a school or district.

Additional graphs show the percentage of students who graduated within 5, 6, or 7 years of entering the 9th grade in a given year. Each percentage comes from a different group of students who started 9th grade together.

Completer Rate: North Dakota’s ESSA plan includes the incorporation of General Education Development / Diploma (GED) along with traditional high school diplomas obtained in measuring graduation rates over time. This measure is referred to as the Completer Rate and it is built upon the Traditional Graduation Rate.

The Traditional Graduation Rate is not cohort-based. Instead, it is based upon graduating seniors. Students in their senior year form the denominator of the Traditional Graduation Rate, and those who ultimately graduated within the year form the numerator. This rate is then used in creating the Completer Rate, with the addition of GED recipients in the same 12-month period, to both the numerator and denominator.

In creating the Completer Rate for GED students, only dropouts who are awarded a North Dakota GED prior to the 22nd birthday can be credited to the providing school as a completer. The GED completer statistic is awarded to the student’s last enrolled high school, that had an exit code of dropout, in North Dakota.  All schools and students can access the GED program through the Adult Learning Centers. 

To see graduation rates by demographic groups, click on “Demographics”.

Graduation rate is calculated based using federal guidance. For more information go to https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/essagradrateguidance.pdf

To protect student privacy, data for schools who have less than 10 students will not be displayed.

In some cases, when appropriate for the purpose of transparency, information involving 10 or more students may be displayed in ranges to avoid potential identification of students in small demographic populations. When utilized, ranges may be represented visually with diagonal lines or open circles in lightly shaded colors.