Want To Graduate High School? Come From A Wealthy Neighborhood!

It’s back-to-school time in the Atlanta region! And while this is hardly ground-breaking research, we thought it would be a good time to remind everyone what one of the best indicators of educational success is – income! We actually tweeted out an excellent piece on this very topic a couple of weeks ago, but we wanted to provide some local context.

The map above shows the median household income by each high school attendance zone (Buford not shown) in the 11-county area. The same map is below, but this time showing the schools with the highest graduation rates in the region (top 20%) – these are the white dots.

So what is the most common pattern in the map? White dots (schools with the highest graduation rates) on top of either red or orange polygons (attendance zones with the highest incomes). This of course shows the strong relationship between income and graduation rates.The Lambert High School attendance zone, in southern Forsyth bordering both Fulton and Gwinnett Counties, has the highest median household income at $146,500. It also has a graduation rate of 97.7 percent, which is the second highest rate in the area.

There are exceptions, sort of. The Early College High School at Carver had a graduating class of 90 students in 2014, and all 90 graduated. Carver’s Early College High School is the white dot on the blue area in the City of Atlanta. But, Carver’s Early College accepts applications from throughout the city, meaning that the kids living outside the Carver zone could be attending the Early College. While most kids attending the Early College at Carver are in-zone, some are not, so we can’t conclusively declare this an exception to the income-graduation rate pattern shown on the map.

And it is the same story for the other schools with the highest graduation rates located in lower-income areas. They are either charter or magnet schools with an application process that draw students from across the district, which means that the students attending these schools don’t necessarily live in the same neighborhood where the schools are located.

Two schools in DeKalb County:

• DeKalb Early College Academy (37 out of 37 graduated)
• DeKalb School of the Arts (67 out of 67 graduated)

One school in Gwinnett:

• The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology, which is a charter school that was ranked in the Top 3 nationally in 2013 (169 out of 170 graduated)

One school in Fulton:

• The Hapeville Charter Career Academy, also a charter school (145 out of 153 graduated)

The fact that these schools draw from a larger catchment area does not lessen the achievement of these schools. We simply can’t make the direct link between neighborhood income levels and school achievement. The gist of story remains the same –  income is a very strong predictor of public school success.