By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
Staff Writer
The four-year graduation rate for students in Beaufort County’s public schools rose significantly for the 2009-2010 school year, approaching the state’s graduation rate for the first time in four years, according to an N.C. Department of Public Instruction report.
Two of the four high schools included in the report — Northside and Southside high schools — recorded graduation rates over 7 percentage points higher than the four-year statewide graduation rate in 2010.
This was the first time in four years the graduation rate for public schools in Beaufort County topped 70 percent, according to the report. 
This increase is the result of a combination of improved tracking of students who leave the school system and an increased emphasis on preventing students from dropping out of school, according to BCS Superintendent Don Phipps.
The four-year graduation rate for public-school students in Beaufort County was 71 percent in 2010, up nearly 9 percent from the four-year graduation rate of 62.2 percent in 2009, according to the report, known as the ABCs of Public Education.
The four-year graduation rate in 2007 was 62.8 percent, and, in 2008, it was 62.2 percent, according to the report.
Statewide, 74.2 percent of high-school students graduated in four years in 2010, up from 2009 when 71.8 percent of high-school students graduated in four years, according to the report.
Since 2002, local school districts have been accounting for each ninth-grade student as he or she moves through high school. This record-keeping provides the state with an accurate count of how many students graduate with a diploma in four years. Because some students may need a fifth year to earn their high-school diploma, a five-year rate also is recorded.
Among Beaufort County schools, Northside High School recorded the highest graduation rate in 2010 with 113 of 133, or 85 percent, of students graduating in four years, according to the report. In 2009, 72.8 percent of students graduated from the school in four years.
Southside High School recorded the greatest increase in the four-year graduation rate in 2010. At the school in 2010, 119 of 145, or 82.1 percent, of students graduated in four years, according to the report. In 2009, only 54.1 percent of students graduated from the school in four years.
At Washington High School in 2010, 212 of 303, or 70 percent, of students graduated in four years, according to the report. In 2009, the four-year graduation rate at the school was 66 percent.
The graduation rate at Beaufort County Ed Tech Center, the county’s alternative school, was 36 percent in 2010, down slightly from 2009 when the graduation rate was 36.8 percent, according to the report. In 2010, nine of 25 students graduated, the report reads.
A fifth high school, Beaufort County Early College High School, a learn-and-earn school based at Beaufort County Community College, is in its third year of operation and was not included in the report.
In previous years, schools in Beaufort County often lost track of students who moved from the area or transferred to other schools. This meant that the system was required to include those students among those who did not graduate from high school and, as a result, the system’s graduation rate was lower than it should have been, Phipps said.
Improved tracking of those students by the system’s testing coordinator and testing technicians has helped bolster the graduation numbers in 2010, he said.
“We now have system data which accurately reflects our student-graduation results,” he said. “The tracking of students over a four-year time period … is a tedious process. Their efforts and attention to detail have yielded immediate results for the Beaufort County Schools.”
The DPI report also includes a breakdown of graduation rates by gender and race. It shows Beaufort County schools generally tracking state trends of female students graduating in four years at a higher rate than male students, white students graduating at a higher rate than most minorities and poor students graduating at a lower rate than their wealthier counterparts.
One Beaufort County high school has taken steps to reverse those trends.
Faced with low test scores and graduation rates, Southside High School established two groups — The Sophisticated Ladies, open to all female students, and The Distinguished Men of Purpose, which targets minority males, according to SHS Principal Rick Anderson.
Both groups strive to help students discover what may be possible for their futures, he said.
In Beaufort County schools in 2010, 77.4 percent of white students graduated in four years, a rate 12.6 percentage points higher than black students, 22.6 percentage points higher than Hispanic students and 27.4 percentage points higher than multi-racial students, according to the report.
Southside High School, where 90 percent of black students graduated in four years in 2010 as compared to 77.3 percent of white students, was the exception to the system’s trend among minority-graduation rates, according to the report.
In 2010, 68 percent of economically disadvantaged students in Beaufort County schools graduated in four years as compared to 74 percent of their wealthier counterparts. Again, Southside High School, where 85.4 percent of poor students graduated in four years as compared to 77.8 percent of their wealthier counterparts, was the exception to the system-wide trend, according to the report.
“We have worked hard over the last two years to change the culture of learning at Southside,” Anderson said.
In Beaufort County schools in 2010, 77.8 percent of female students graduated in four years as compared to 72.4 percent of male students. This trend was the same in all county high schools, according to the report.
The ABCs of Public Education began in the 1996-97 school year as North Carolina’s primary school-improvement program, providing the state’s first school-level accountability system and generating information that has allowed North Carolina to better target school-improvement efforts, according to the Department of Public Instruction.
The ABCs program also includes reports on the adequate yearly progress of schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.