Definition

The number and percent of youth by county who graduate in 4 years from public schools and 60% publicly funded private schools. The numerator is the number of students graduating in the state in 4 years and the denominator includes the cohort of ninth grade students 4 years prior plus all transfers in and all transfers out.

Data Source

Special data request to the Maine Department of Education for high school graduation aggregated by county.

Source for national comparisons, KIDS COUNT 2020-2021 Not graduating on time

Notes

The year refers to the year of graduation, so 2025 is the 2024-2025 school year. In this series, the calculation is at the student level rather than the school level.  This makes it "weighted". For example, suppose a county had 3 schools, one with 300 ninth graders and two small schools with 20 ninth graders each. If 70% of the students graduated at the large school and 95% at the two other schools, the student average would be (300x70%)= 210 graduates plus 19 + graduates, so the "weighted average would be 248/340 = 72.9% for the county.

The data for the series 2009 -2013 is unweighted. This means it averages all the individual school graduation rates in a county, rather than taking all the ninth graders in the county and how many of that cohort graduated 4 years later.  In the above example, the graduation rates of the three schools would be averaged (70% +95% +%)/3 = 86.6%.  86.6% would be the unweighted average.

Last Updated

2025-11