ATLANTA — The public high school on-time graduation rate continued its nearly nonstop rise last school year, reaching an 88.5% statewide rate, the Georgia Department of Education announced Monday.
That is more than a percentage point higher than the statewide “four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate” for 2025, which was 87.2%.
Under that federal method of calculation, schools must count all students who enter into their class year during high school, either by enrolling in ninth grade or transferring in later. Officials can only subtract students who transfer out after confirming they reenrolled at another school.
The grad rate has climbed nearly every year since that calculation was mandated in 2011, when 67.4% graduated on time. The one exception was the class of 2021, which experienced the spring semester of junior year and all of senior year during the disruptions of COVID-19. The rate for that class fell a tenth of a percentage point from the prior year to 83.7%.
Since then, has Georgia been inching toward a 90% statewide rate.
But the vast majority of school districts have already met that bar. Of 180 city and county districts, 141 had a graduation rate at or above 90%.
Four districts, Ware and Warren counties and Chickamauga and Trion cities, graduated every student. In that group, only Ware, with a graduation class size of 318, had more than 100 seniors though.
Among metro Atlanta districts, where class sizes are larger, the city systems for Atlanta, Decatur and Marietta and the county systems for Cobb and Fulton all exceeded 90%, with Decatur leading them at 96.7%.
Fulton, the largest in that bunch, graduated 93.4% of the 7,718 students in the graduating class. Mike Looney, the superintendent, attributed it to hard work.
Richard Woods, the state school superintendent, also attributed the rising rate to students who see value in a diploma. Over the years, the state has increased diploma options, with school-to-work “pathways” such as the accelerated career diploma.
“Today’s news is a testament to our shared efforts to ensure Georgia students see the relevance of their education and are connected to opportunity in the future,” Woods said in a statement.
Even so, several state specialty schools gave diplomas to fewer than a third of their graduating class, and one county school district, Jenkins County, had a 65% rate.
Three dozen other city and county districts had rates in the 80s, including some with thousands of seniors, such as Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in metro Atlanta.