Montana last year saw record high graduation rates for high school students, and Whitefish High School is sitting above the state average.

The state Office of Public Instruction announced last week that the statewide four-year cohort graduation rate for the 2017-18 school year was 86.4 percent, the highest percentage since the measurement became standard in 2011.

Whitefish’s graduation rate for 2017-18 came in at 88.79 percent, the highest for the school in the last five years. For 2016-17, Whitefish’s graduation rate was 86.82 percent or the lowest of the last five.

WHS’s graduation rate last year is second-highest among Flathead Valley schools, with Flathead High School coming in at 89.09 percent, Columbia Falls at 87.59 percent and Bigfork at 85.33 percent. Glacier High School sits at 86.10 percent.

The four-year cohort graduation rate considers the number of graduates receiving a high school diploma in four years as well as dropout numbers and students who take longer to graduate.

“I am proud to see so many Montana students succeeding in their high school careers,” State Superintendent Elsie Arntzen said in a prepared release. “The OPI has been working with schools to promote not only high school completion but also skill development that allows Montana students to enter the workforce or higher education prepared to succeed. Additionally, we have begun new school improvement efforts this year to close long-standing achievement gaps that exist with our American Indian students.”

OPI also announced American Indian students also achieved record graduation rates last year at a statewide average of 67.6 percent, a slight increase over the previous year’s 67.5 percent.

Numbers for Whitefish’s American Indian student enrollment in the previous year were not available.

More information on Montana’s 2018 graduation data can be found on OPI’s data warehouse website, which includes completion rates, dropout rates, and individual school data: https://gems.opi.mt.gov/StudentCharacteristics/.