The Class of 2009 in Portsmouth received recognition that school officials would probably prefer to not see; they had the 2nd highest dropout rate in the State of Virginia.
The City had a 20.1% drop out rate. That is almost 3 times the State average of 7.9%.
In more promising news, the Portsmouth City Public Schools are all now fully accredited by the State. Also, the on-time graduation rate has continued to increase.
All of the Hampton Roads area school districts have at least one high school that has dropout rates higher than the State average. Virginia Beach City still has the lowest in the area at 6%, followed by Chesapeake. Suffolk and Norfolk both have dropout rates higher than the state average.
Portsmouth School officials say that reducing the number of required electives will help curb the dropout rate. Really? Seems to me that with over a fifth of the system's students dropping out, more serious measures need to be put into place. High dropout rates correlate with higher crime rates and lower community incomes. Students who dropout will cost the City more in services over the long term.
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