Clarke County's High School Graduation Rate Recalculated

In Athens, the rate of graduation from the two public high schools has dipped slightly.

Why? It wasn't that fewer students earned a diploma. No, the decrease comes because the Georgia Department of Education has changed the way that it determines graduation rates.

According to a press release from the , the new method used by the Georgia Department of Education considers a cohort of students, those who start ninth grade together. It looks at whether this cohort graduates in four years and one summer.

Why use this new method? Because the U.S. Department of Education says to. Federal education officials want to be able to compare graduation rates across the country.

So now, the statewide graduation rate is 67.4 percent, far from the 80.9 percent using a different method. In Clarke County, the graduation rate is 66.1 percent, compared to 70.8 percent, which reflects the earlier method.