COVID slide having real effects on WCSD students | Adrienne Santiago
Adrienne Santiago
This opinion column was submitted by Adrienne Santiago, executive director of the Northern Nevada Literacy Council.
Does Nevada’s trajectory of rising graduation rates fall at the hands of a national pandemic? For the past nine years, before the pandemic, Nevada’s graduation rates had been steadily rising an average of 2.9% points each year, getting us from a 70.3% graduation rate in 2010 to an 84% graduation rate in 2019.
That is, until our Nevada youth encountered the “COVID-19 slide,” dropping our 2020 graduation rate by 1.5% and leaving an estimated 6,000 youth without a high school diploma. Closer to home, Washoe County’s graduation rates saw a drop of 0.9%, leaving 729 seniors without a high school diploma. For the Washoe County School District, this is the first time there has been a drop since 2012. In addition, Washoe County’s last drop in graduation rates came as a res