Area school districts are doing a better job graduating students than their counterparts throughout the state, but their job is never done.

The U.S. Department of Education has set a 90 percent on-time graduation rate goal starting with the Class of 2020.

In one of Pennsylvania’s ways to track graduation, seniors in Franklin County graduated in at least an 86 percent clip in 2010-11, which was Waynesboro Area Senior High School’s rate – the lowest in the county.

Pennsylvania’s on-time graduation rate – which tracks students as a cohort over four years – is at 80.5 percent.

Two Franklin County school districts provided cohort graduation numbers from when the Pennsylvania Department of Education started tracking the statistic after the 2009-10 school year.

Shippensburg Area Senior High School reported an 88.41 percent cohort graduation rate in 2009-2010 and an 86.31 percent rate in 2010-11.

James Buchanan High School in Mercersburg tracked its rate to 81.53 percent in 2009-10 and 85.51 percent in 2010-11.

It’s intent is to focus districts on considering a graduation as a four-year project, but it also doesn’t account for the nomadic nature of today’s society or students who may finish up beyond four years.

“I think it’s a phony statistic,” said Bruce Levy, SASHS principal. “We’re seeing more and more of a…………… continues on Chambersburg Public Opinion

When she sets foot on the campus of San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University in the fall, Kyler Ladd will be the first person in her family to attend college.

“It makes me really proud. I get to set an example for my younger brothers and sisters,” said the 17-year-old senior at Mission Oak High School.

In addition to being the first person in her family to attend college, Ladd will hold another distinction, one that she shares with the thousands of other Tulare County seniors graduating this month.

The class of 2012 will be the first group of students to have spent their entire high school careers under an economic slump.

They watched as a down economy took away jobs and drove up unemployment rates to near Great Depression levels; they watched as their parents lost their homes to foreclosure and as their older siblings struggled to stay in institutions of higher education as tuition soared and swaths of crucial classes were cut.

“I was really nervous about applying to colleges,” Ladd said, despite having accumulated a 4.17 GPA. “I was nervous about not getting in. But then I worried if I did get accepted, I didn’t know how I would pay for it.”

There’s a reason for her concern. Tuition has increased six years in a row at the 23-campus California State University system.

At the 10-campus University of Califor…………… continues on Visalia Times-Delta