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Delaware Hits an All-Time High 88.9% Graduation Rate. The 90% Line Is Still 1.1 Points Away.

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

For the class of 2023, 88.9% of Delaware's public high school students earned a diploma within four years. That is the highest four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate the state has ever recorded, 4.6 percentage points above where it stood in 2015, and nearly two points above the national average of 87%.

It is also, still, below 90%.

That threshold matters because the Delaware Department of Education has never cleared it. Not once in nine years of data. And it matters because the DOE's 2025-2028 strategic plan has set 91% as a formal target, meaning the state needs to gain more than two points in roughly five years. At its average pace of 0.6 points per year since 2015, Delaware would need about two more years just to touch 90%. But the state has been in this neighborhood before, at 88.3% in 2019, and then watched the rate slide backward for two consecutive years.

The shape of the climb

The trajectory from 84.4% to 88.9% was not a straight line. From 2015 to 2019, gains accelerated: +0.3 points, then +1.1, +0.9, and +1.6. The class of 2019 graduated at 88.3%, the previous high, and the state appeared to be on a path to cross 90% by 2021.

Then COVID intervened. The class of 2020 dipped to 87.7%, and the class of 2021 fell further to 87.0%, erasing two years of progress. Unlike many states that saw graduation rates inflate during the pandemic as districts relaxed requirements, Delaware's rate actually declined, a pattern that reflects the state's decision not to adopt blanket grade-forgiveness policies.

Recovery took until 2023. The class of 2022 regained most of the lost ground at 87.8%, and the class of 2023 added another 1.1 points to set the record.

The year-over-year pattern reveals something worth watching: the post-COVID rebound (+0.8 and +1.1 points in 2022 and 2023) matches the pre-COVID pace. Whether that momentum continues or flattens, as it did before 2019, will determine whether the DOE's 91% target is realistic.

Nine districts clear 90%. Three are stuck below 80%.

The statewide number obscures a 25-point spread across Delaware's 19 districts. Nine already exceed 90%, but three remain below 80%: Christina School District^↗ at 73.2%, Seaford^↗ at 74.0%, and Laurel at 79.5%.

The three vocational-technical districts, POLYTECH (98.1%), New Castle County Vo-Tech (97.5%), and Sussex Technical (95.7%), occupy the top three positions, though their selective admissions and specialized programming make direct comparison with traditional districts unreliable.

Among traditional districts, Appoquinimink^↗ leads at 95.4%, followed by Delmar^↗ (93.8%) and Smyrna^↗ (93.4%). All three sit in central or southern Delaware, away from Wilmington's boundary complexities.

The bottom of the distribution is where the 90% target faces its stiffest resistance. Christina at 73.2% and Seaford at 74.0% would each need to gain 16 to 17 points to reach 90%. Christina has improved just 1.8 points since 2015, a pace that would take decades. Seaford has moved in the wrong direction, dropping 5.8 points over the same period.

The Wilmington gap

The four districts that share responsibility for Wilmington's students tell divergent stories. Red Clay^↗ graduates 92.2%, firmly above 90%. Brandywine^↗ crossed 90% for the first time, reaching 90.9%. Colonial^↗ improved substantially, from 77.6% to 83.3%, a 5.8-point gain, but remains well below the threshold. And Christina, which serves the largest share of the city's low-income students, sits nearly 20 points behind Red Clay.

That disparity is at the center of the Redding Consortium for Educational Equity's redistricting deliberations. The consortium, a state task force created in 2019 to address inequities rooted in Delaware's 1981 desegregation-era district boundaries, voted in late 2025 to study merging some or all of Wilmington's districts into a unified system. One option under consideration would consolidate Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, and Red Clay into a single district serving more than 20,000 students.

Whether consolidation would raise Christina's graduation rate is an open question. Christina's challenges, including a 20.5% chronic absenteeism rate and the lowest proficiency scores among the four Wilmington districts, reflect concentrated poverty and decades of boundary decisions that sorted students by neighborhood income. Merging district lines does not automatically merge outcomes. But it would make the 20-point gap between Red Clay and Christina a problem that one superintendent, one school board, and one budget would have to own.

Where the gains came from, and where they did not

The equity story in Delaware's graduation data is more complicated than the topline suggests.

Black students made the largest gains of any racial group, climbing 6.7 points from 81.1% to 87.8%. The white-Black graduation gap narrowed from 5.9 points to 3.7 points, the smallest in the dataset. That is a meaningful improvement, and it puts Black students within a point of the statewide average.

Economically disadvantaged students gained 8.0 points, from 73.7% to 81.6%, and students with disabilities gained 9.6 points, from 63.7% to 73.3%. In both cases, the gap with white students narrowed by several points.

But two groups have not kept pace. Hispanic students gained just 3.4 points over nine years, less than the statewide average, and the white-Hispanic gap actually widened from 7.2 to 8.2 points. English learners improved 4.9 points to 73.5%, but remain nearly 18 points below white students, a gap that has barely moved since 2015.

Three subgroups have already crossed 90%: Asian students (94.4%), female students (91.6%), and white students (91.5%). Three others are below 75%: students with disabilities (73.3%), English learners (73.5%), and students experiencing homelessness (72.8%). The gap between the top and bottom of that distribution is nearly 22 points.

The gender gap is also persistent. Female students have graduated above 90% since 2019. Male students have never crossed 87%, reaching a high of 86.2% in 2023, a 5.3-point gap that has held roughly steady for nine years.

What 91% would require

Secretary of Education Cindy Marten's strategic plan frames the 91% target alongside other goals: raising third-grade reading proficiency from 38% to 53%, reducing chronic absenteeism from 15% to 13%, and expanding early education access from 25% to 40% of eligible families.

"If only 38% of our third-graders are reading at grade level and chronic absenteeism is at 15%, we have to get past admiring the problem and just naming it." -- Secretary Cindy Marten, WDEL, March 2026

The absenteeism connection matters because it is the most direct operational lever for graduation rates. A 2024 truancy needs assessment by the National Center for School Engagement found that 23% of Delaware students were chronically absent in 2022-23, up from pre-pandemic levels of about 15%. Students who miss more than 10% of school days are substantially less likely to graduate on time. The districts with the lowest graduation rates, Christina, Seaford, and Colonial, also report some of the state's highest absenteeism.

At its post-COVID pace of about 0.9 points per year, Delaware could cross 90% with the class of 2025 and reach 91% a year or two after that. But this projection assumes the rate keeps climbing at a speed it has sustained only in the two post-COVID recovery years, not across the full nine-year trend. The longer average suggests 91% would arrive closer to 2029 or 2030.

The harder math involves Christina. If Christina's rate stays near 73%, it pulls the state average down by roughly half a point. For Delaware to reach 91% statewide, either Christina must dramatically accelerate, which nothing in its nine-year trajectory suggests is imminent, or every other district must overperform to compensate.

Lake Forest^↗ offers one model for what rapid improvement looks like. The district gained 8.2 points in nine years, climbing from 82.2% to 90.4%, and has stayed above 90% for two consecutive years. But Lake Forest is a small, rural district in Kent County. Its pathway, whatever it was, may not translate to the urban poverty and fragmented governance that define Wilmington's schools.

The next graduation data release, covering the class of 2024, will show whether Delaware's record is a launching pad or another false summit. The state has been within two points of 90% before. It has never gotten through.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Delaware's Special Education Rate Hits 22%, Seven Points Above the Nation

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Delaware added 11,546 public school students over the past decade. It added 11,728 students with Individualized Education Programs. The entire net enrollment gain, and then some, came from special education.

That arithmetic produces a state where 22.0% of students now receive special education services, up from 15.4% in 2014-15. The national average, according to the most recent federal data, is 15%. Delaware's rate exceeds it by seven percentage points. Non-special-education enrollment, meanwhile, barely moved: 117,684 students in 2015, 117,502 in 2025. A net loss of 182.

The steadiest line in Delaware education

What stands out in the data is not a single shock but a decade of relentless, almost metronomic growth. Delaware added roughly 1,000 special education students every year from 2015 through 2019. The pandemic year of 2019-20 produced a single anomalous spike of 3,007 new identifications, followed by the slowest year on record (268 in 2020-21), then a return to the long-run pace: 1,256, 926, 1,067, and 951 in the four years since.

Strip out the 2020 spike and the 2021 rebound, and the pre-pandemic average (1,063 per year) is nearly identical to the post-pandemic average (1,050 per year). COVID did not cause this growth. COVID interrupted it for one year, created a surge the next, and then the underlying trend resumed as if nothing had happened.

That underlying trend is what matters. At roughly 1,000 additional IEPs per year on a base of 150,000 students, the rate climbs by about half a percentage point annually. If the pace holds, Delaware will cross 25% before the end of the decade.

The Wilmington corridor

The highest special education rates in Delaware cluster in the Wilmington-area districts now at the center of a proposed consolidation. Christina^↗ leads at 29.5%, meaning nearly three in 10 of its students have IEPs. Colonial^↗ is at 29.4%. Capital^↗, in Dover, reaches 26.4%.

The increases over the decade are substantial. Colonial climbed 11.3 percentage points, from 18.1% to 29.4%. Red Clay^↗ jumped 10.6 points, from 12.3% to 22.9%. Brandywine^↗ rose from 15.2% to 25.1%. Christina, which started high, added another 10.6 points.

The pattern is not confined to struggling urban districts. Appoquinimink^↗, a fast-growing suburban district in the Middletown corridor, added 1,587 special education students since 2015, more in absolute terms than any other district except Red Clay. Its rate rose from 13.7% to 21.5%. Lake Forest^↗, a rural district in Kent County, went from 16.3% to 25.2%. Woodbridge^↗, also rural, jumped from 14.5% to 24.9%.

Every traditional district in the state saw its special education rate increase. Not one declined.

A gap between sectors

Charter schools in Delaware serve a growing but still markedly lower share of students with disabilities. Traditional districts collectively report a 23.1% special education rate. Charter schools report 16.4%.

Both sectors are rising. Charters climbed from 9.8% in 2015 to 16.4% in 2025, a 6.6 percentage-point increase. Traditional districts climbed from 15.7% to 23.1%, a 7.4-point gain. The absolute gap between the two sectors has widened slightly, from 5.9 points to 6.7 points.

In a school choice state like Delaware, where students can cross district lines and enroll in charters, this differential is not neutral. It creates a structural dynamic: traditional districts absorb a disproportionate share of students whose instructional programs carry higher per-pupil costs. Whether this reflects selection effects (families of students with complex IEPs choosing traditional schools for established services) or differences in identification practice is not answerable from enrollment data alone.

What is driving the count upward

The most likely explanation for a sustained, steady increase in identification rates is a broadening of who gets identified, not a sudden change in the underlying prevalence of disabilities. Nationally, special education enrollment hit an all-time high of 7.5 million in 2022-23, and the fastest-growing categories are autism, developmental delay, and other health impairments, conditions where identification depends heavily on screening practices and clinical thresholds.

Delaware's growth fits this national pattern but far outpaces it. The national rate has moved from roughly 13.8% to 15% over the same decade, a 1.2-point shift. Delaware gained 6.6 points. Something beyond the national trend is at work.

One contributing factor is Delaware's unit-based funding system, which allocates state funding based in part on how many special education "units" a district generates. Each unit is defined as one certified position per 8.4 preschool special education students, with similar ratios for other categories. Identifying more students generates more funded positions. This is not to suggest that districts are fabricating IEPs, but it means the system does not create a financial disincentive to identify. Education policy expert Kenneth Shores, reviewing Delaware's funding structure for the state's Public Education Funding Commission, noted that "Delaware is pretty unusually needy, not so much with poverty, but with its special needs population and the ELL population."

A competing explanation is that Delaware genuinely does have higher rates of students who need services, and the growing identification reflects a state that is getting closer to finding them all. The NCES estimates Delaware's IDEA rate at 19% for 2022-23, already ranking among the highest in the country. States like Pennsylvania (21.1%), New York (20.7%), and Maine (20.6%) operate at comparable levels. Delaware may simply be a state where the actual need is high and the identification system is responsive.

The staffing equation

Growth of this magnitude carries direct operational consequences. Research by Rachel Juergensen of Delaware State University found 165 vacant special education teaching positions during the summer of 2023.

"The need for special education teachers in Delaware is critical, and without intervention, the severe shortages and subsequent negative impact on students with disabilities will continue to prevail." -- Rachel Juergensen, WHYY, Nov. 2023

A $1 million federal grant created the Delaware Special Educator Certificate (DE-SPEC) program to address the shortage, targeting 60 teachers over three cohorts. At the current growth rate of roughly 1,000 new IEPs per year, the program's capacity does not match the scale of the demand.

The broader funding picture is equally strained. A 2023 study by the American Institutes for Research, commissioned as part of a funding litigation settlement, found that Delaware underfunds its schools by $600 million to $1 billion relative to what would be needed to meet state educational goals. Special education students are a central part of that gap.

What to watch next

The Redding Consortium voted in December 2025 to recommend merging Christina, Colonial, Brandywine, and Red Clay into a single Northern New Castle County district of more than 45,000 students. If the legislature approves, the merged district would inherit a combined special education population of 13,854 students, 26.3% of its enrollment. Senator Tizzy Lockman, co-chair of the Redding Consortium, has argued that consolidation "meaningfully and fully addresses structural fragmentation" that determines what resources students can access. Whether a larger district can serve 13,000-plus IEPs more efficiently than four smaller ones is the operational question the merger must eventually answer.

In the meantime, the count keeps climbing. Delaware added 951 special education students last year, 1,067 the year before, 926 the year before that. The line has not bent in a decade.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.