The New York State Board of Regents regulates the state’s graduation requirements, and all New York City students must meet them before they can be issued a diploma. The meaning, or value, of a high school diploma has been debated during the two decades that the city’s graduation rate increased. In 2000, the graduation rate was 49.9%, about the same level it had been when it was first computed in the mid-1980s. In percentage terms, the city’s cohort graduation rate-that is, the percentage of entering ninth-graders who graduated within four years-has increased steadily from the early 2000s and now stands at 78.8% ( Figure 1).
Each year, more than 55,000 students graduate from the public high schools run by the New York City Department of Education (DOE) 58,000 did so in school year 2019–20.