The Coeur d’Alene School District’s graduation rates fell between the 2013-14 school year and the 2014-15 school year even as the state’s graduation rate increased.

The Idaho State Department of Education reported the district’s graduation rate for the 2014-15 school year was 84.94 percent. That’s down from 86.8 percent the previous school year.

Both those years, the Coeur d’Alene School District still exceeded the state’s average. Idaho’s statewide graduation rate for 2014-2015 was 78.9 percent, an increase from the previous year’s 77.3 percent average.

The 2013-2014 school year was the first year a new, federal calculation was used to measure graduation rates — how many students received a high school diploma after four years of high school education.

The new calculation counts specific student populations as “non-graduates,” when they were previously counted as “graduates” or removed entirely from the equation.

According to the State Department of Education’s website, “non-graduates” could be alternative students who are in school completing credits to graduate, students who earned a GED, special education students who earned a diploma under adapted guidelines, or students who transferred out of state without official documentation.

Coeur d’Alene School District’s high schools’ graduation rates for the 2014-15 school year were:

n Coeur d’Alene High School: 92.36 percent

n Lake City High School: 87.31 percent

n Venture Alternative High School: 33.33 percent.

“In talking with our team, we're always looking at ways to improve and are already looking at our preliminary results from the class of 2016 so that our results accurately reflect [our] commitment to students,” said Mike Nelson, the Coeur d’Alene School District’s director of curriculum and assessments.

LAKELAND IMPROVES

Lakeland School District posted a graduation rate of 90.43 percent for the 2014-2015 school year, an improvement over the previous year’s 88.3 percent.

Lakeland high schools’ graduation rates for the 2014-15 school year were:

n Lakeland High School: 98.84 percent

n Timberlake High School: 89.72 percent

n Mountain View Alternative High School: 59.09 percent

Lakeland Assistant Superintendent Lisa Sexton said she was surprised by the difference between the two traditional high schools’ rates. When she looked into it, she said, she realized Timberlake High School didn’t do as well indicating where students went if they left the district.

“Timberlake didn’t indicate in their system if students who left went to home school,” she said. “For the state, if you can’t verify where they go, it counts against us. Obviously our goal is that all our kids will graduate.”

POST FALLS INCREASES

Trailing the other public school districts in Kootenai County for overall graduation rates is the Post Falls School District, which posted a 75.98 percent graduation rate for the 2014-15 school year. That’s still better than the previous year’s rate of 74.3 percent.

Post Falls high schools’ graduation rates for the 2014-2015 school year were:

n Post Falls High School: 93.33 percent

n New Vision Alternative High School: 13.58 percent

Post Falls Superintendent Jerry Keane said his district’s numbers show that it allows students at New Vision High School to stay as long as they need to get the necessary credits to graduate.

“The graduation rate rule is if they don’t graduate in four years, they don’t count,” he said. “That year we had a bunch of kids that came back to complete their degrees.”

He also said special education students count against the schools as well because they’re allowed to stay in school until they are 21. He said the district often encourages these students to stay in school as long as they need to prepare for life.

“It does not make sense to me that schools are penalized for encouraging kids to stay in school,” he said.