Mobile County school officials announced a new, more ambitious graduation rate goal after the district blew past its previous target years ahead of schedule. Superintendent Martha Peek revealed the updated benchmark, a 90 percent graduation rate by 2017, during the school system’s annual legislative delegation meeting in early January 2015.
The announcement came on the heels of striking progress. Mobile County’s four-year, on-time graduation rate reached 82 percent, meaning 82 percent of students who entered high school as freshmen in 2010 graduated on schedule the previous spring. That figure doesn’t even include an additional 6 percent of students who either finished in December 2014 or remained enrolled and working toward a diploma.
The district’s original goal, set years earlier, had been to reach an 80 percent graduation rate by 2020. Hitting 82 percent put Mobile County six years ahead of that original timeline, prompting the decision to raise the bar significantly. The new 90 percent target is also considerably more aggressive than the Alabama State Department of Education’s statewide goal under its Plan 2020 initiative, which aims for a 90 percent graduation rate across Alabama by 2020, three years later than Mobile County’s self-imposed deadline. The statewide graduation rate stood at 86 percent at the time.
The turnaround in Mobile County has been years in the making. In 2008, the district’s graduation rate stood at just 55.7 percent, among the lowest in the state. Community organizations, including the Mobile Area Education Foundation, partnered with the school system starting in 2006 on a concerted improvement effort backed by a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, issued through the mayor’s office. The rate climbed steadily in the years that followed: 64 percent in 2011, 70 percent in 2012, and 75 percent in 2013, before reaching 82 percent by early 2015.
As the largest school district in Alabama with roughly 59,000 students, Mobile County accounts for about 10 percent of all high school graduates statewide, giving its graduation rate outsized influence on Alabama’s overall education outcomes. Superintendent Peek’s announcement framed the new 90 percent goal as both a challenge and a statement of confidence following years of measurable gains built on sustained community and school system collaboration.
Education advocates in Mobile County have pointed to targeted interventions, dropout-prevention programs and closer tracking of at-risk students as key drivers behind the rate’s steady climb since 2008. Whether the district can maintain that pace and reach 90 percent within two years remained an open question for local school leaders heading into the rest of the school year.