Hispanic and Latino students are graduating high school in Utah at a 9% lower rate than white students, according to data from the Utah State Board of Education. The Ogden School District, however, is an outlier. Its Hispanic and Latino students, who make up more than half of the district, have graduated at a higher rate than white students for the past two years.
Ogden Superintendent Luke Rasmussen said increasing graduation rates was a priority when he became principal of Ogden High in 2016.
“It was just communication on a weekly basis with students on where they were at. There was a lot of goal setting with students.”
They also relied on the 2x10 process to build relationships. That’s when an adult has a two-minute, non-academic conversation with a student for 10 consecutive days.
All of that work has paid off. The district’s overall graduation rate has gone up from 67.9% in 2016 to 88.97% in 2024. As overall rates increased, Hispanic and Latino students caught up to — and surpassed — their white peers.
Rasmussen said the high schools’ block schedule also allows for extra class time in core subjects like math and English.
“We can double block math so students have math every day, as opposed to every other day,” he said. “We can put in an academic support class to help a student with either credit makeup or with passing their classes the first time.”
Beyond extra support, he said getting students involved in programs that interest them, whether they be concurrent enrollment, career and technical education or a plan to attend college out of state, invests them in their education.
The district also color-codes each high school student. Green means they’re on track to graduate, yellow means they’re off track but have a plan, and red means educators are working to develop a plan. Rasmussen said counseling teams and principals regularly go through every student who is tagged yellow or red.
The gap in graduation rates closed naturally as the district adopted these strategies.
“Looking at every single student and then really throwing interventions or lassos around those students and helping them get back on track, finding out what the barriers were, what we needed to do — home visits, relationship building, connections with their classes, helping them pass their class the first time” supported the entire cohort, he said.
Still, Ogden School District hasn’t achieved perfect parity.
The state has not yet released detailed 2024 data, but in 2023, Hispanic students at Ogden High School graduated at a lower rate than white students. Rasmussen said this is because Ogden High hosts the district’s program for students new to the country, many of whom are from Latin America.
At Ben Lomond, Ogden’s other main high school, Hispanic and Latino students have graduated at higher rates than their white peers since 2018. Sixty percent of students there are Hispanic, compared to less than half at Ogden High.
The district’s graduation rate for Black students varies from year to year because the group is small, at fewer than 40 students. In 2021, for example, it was on par with white students, while in 2023, it was below. Overall, male students graduate at lower rates than their female peers.
Aaron Brough, director of data and statistics for the Utah State Board of Education, said it’s cause for concern whenever a student doesn’t graduate within four years.
“Anytime there is a gap, that is something that we definitely take a look at. We look at the trends of those gaps. Are they closing? Are they widening?”
Statewide, graduation rates are trending upward for both Hispanic and Latino and white students. The gap between the two groups is getting smaller, down from 11% in 2017 to 9.3% in 2024.
Beaver and Juab were the other two districts with a 2024 graduation rate for Hispanic and Latino students greater than or equal to that of white students, with 15 and 14 Hispanic or Latino students who all graduated, respectively.
“It's moving in a positive direction,” Brough said. “Is it moving as fast as we would hope it would? It's hard — that's an opinion, right?”
Nationally, 90% of white students graduate high school in four years, compared to 83% of Hispanic students.
As for Ogden, Brough said “they’re doing amazing work, and they are really moving the whole Ogden school system in a positive direction.”
He noted the district’s large Hispanic and Latino student population may play into them closing the gap between graduation rates.
“The expectation is, when [the] majority of your population is graduating, you're just going to see the number that [Hispanic/Latino graduation rates] are higher.”
Superintendent Rasmussen said their current strategic plan goes beyond graduation rates to focus on what students take with them when they get their diplomas.
“Now we're really looking at rigorous coursework, skills, attributes, knowledge, competencies. What credentials are they leaving our system with?”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
