BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Both Florida and Bradford County raised their high school graduation rate at the end of the 2023-24 school year.
Keystone Heights Junior/Senior High School also graduated a higher percentage of students last year.
Bradford High School’s 87.3% graduation rate showed the most improvement, however. School district leaders celebrated the news during Monday’s board meeting, with Assistant Superintendent Karen Clarke saying, “We’re just at that door of 90%, which is pretty incredible in a very short period of time.”
Principal Chris Coffey later said, “The Class of 2024’s success is a testament to the dedication of our students, the support of their families, and the hard work of the incredible teachers and staff that worked with them from pre-K through senior year. Together, we’ve achieved a nearly 5% increase in our graduation rate, and we couldn’t be prouder of this achievement. Go Tornadoes, Go Big Red!”
Bradford’s graduation rate grew 4.8 percentage points over the prior year, and that’s more than 11 percentage points in just two years.
Bradford County
2018-19 —87.7%
2019-20* —88.2%
2020-21* —85%
2021-22 —76.1%
2022-23 —82.5%
2023-24 —87.3%
Bradford High graduated 178 of 203 students in the cohort. This included 87% of its 46 Black seniors and 78% of its 41 ESE seniors — an improvement in both categories. The Hispanic group was not large enough for DOE to report the results.
(Years marked with an asterisk are the pandemic years, during which high school graduates were exempt from statewide standardized assessment requirements for graduation. These are marked as a reminder that many districts saw an improvement in the graduation rate, as Bradford did in 2020. Rates during these years could be interpreted as artificially high because of the reduced graduation requirements. Many districts experienced a drop in their graduation rates following the pandemic.)
Keystone Heights Junior/Senior High at 92.9% had the highest of the local high school scores. Like the prior year, this was just under the districtwide rate for Clay County, which was 93.3% in 2023-24.
Clay County
2018-19 —91.9%
2019-20* —93.4%
2020-21* —92.7%
2021-22 —89.9%
2022-23 —90.9%
2023-24 —93.3%
Keystone Heights High graduated 182 of 196 students in the cohort. The school did not have a large enough group of Black, Hispanic or at-risk students for DOE to report the results.
Union County High’s graduation rate slipped, falling 3.7 percentage points.
Union County
2018-19 —84.4%
2019-20* —79.6%
2020-21* —88.3%
2021-22 —77.8%
2022-23 —85.9%
2023-24 —82.2%
Union County High graduated 125 of 152 students in the cohort. This included 81% of its 21 Black seniors. There were not enough Hispanic, ESE or at-risk students for DOE to report the results.
The state’s graduation rate reached a new high of 89.7% for the 2023-24 school year. According to the Florida Department of Education, this was an increase of 1.7 percentage points over the previous school year.
The state also pointed to greater success graduating members of all subgroups, including a 2.1 percentage point increase for Black students and a 2.2 percentage point increase for Hispanic students.
