Seaford
Seaford's Graduation Rate Fell 5.8 Points, Delaware's Steepest District Decline
Correction (July 21, 2026): The original headline said no other Delaware district had declined. The complete package-backed panel shows four districts finished 2023 below their 2015 rates. The article...
English Learners Lost Their Attendance Advantage
Correction (July 20, 2026; audited July 22, 2026): An earlier version said the English-learner attendance gap had not reversed after 2021, presented grade-level English-learner rates that the state pa...
Delaware Special-Education Chronic Absence Fell Below 2019
Correction (July 21, 2026): The original article understated the 2018-19-to-2024-25 special-education improvement as 0.5 percentage points instead of 0.6. It also said special education was the only s...
Only 8 of 35 Districts Beat Their Pre-COVID Absence Rates
Smyrna School District, in the heart of Kent County, has posted a chronic absenteeism rate below the state average every year for a decade. Its 2025 rate of 12.1% is among the lowest of any traditiona...
NCC Vo-Tech Graduates 98% of Black Students
At New Castle County Vocational-Technical School District, Black students graduate at 98.0%. White students graduate at 95.3%.
Woodbridge Cut Chronic Absenteeism by 13 Points in One Year
In a district of 2,698 students tucked into the farmland between Bridgeville and Greenwood, something changed between 2024 and 2025. Woodbridge School District went from a chronic absenteeism rate of ...
Lake Forest Crossed 90%. No District Gained More.
In 2019, Lake Forest School District graduated 78.3% of its senior class. That was a crisis number, 10 points below the Delaware state average, the worst rate Lake Forest had posted in the data window...
Seaford Cut Chronic Absenteeism by 21 Points in Three Years
In 2021-22, more than half the students at Seaford Senior High School were chronically absent. The 52.6% rate meant that in a building of 981 teenagers, 516 were missing at least 18 school days per ye...
Two Districts Where One in Three Boys Don't Graduate on Time
In Seaford, a former DuPont company town in inland Sussex County, roughly one in three boys does not finish high school in four years. The male graduation rate there is 67.7%. In Christina, the sprawl...
Delaware's Hispanic Graduation Gap Nearly Doubled in Three Years
In Laurel, about two in three Hispanic seniors graduated in 2023. In the same town, nearly nine in 10 white seniors did. The 24.3 percentage-point gap between them is the widest in the state, three ti...
Christina Graduates 73%. The State Wants to Redraw the Map.
In December 2025, the Redding Consortium for Educational Equity voted 19-2 to recommend merging the four school districts that share Wilmington's students into a single consolidated district. The prop...
1 in 2: Delaware's Students Who Are Homeless and the Attendance Crisis
At the Hope Center in New Castle County, Delaware's largest family shelter, more than half of the 300-plus residents are children. They sleep in converted hotel rooms, ride buses to schools across the...
Delaware Hits an All-Time High 88.9% Graduation Rate. The 90% Line Is Still 1.1 Points Away.
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....
Delaware Claws Back 81% of Its Attendance Crisis
Three years ago, more than one in four Delaware students was chronically absent. In 2022, 37,520 students missed 10% or more of the school year, a rate of 25.7%, more than 10 percentage points above t...
Delaware's English Learner Population Has Doubled in a Decade
In Sussex County, where poultry processing plants and agricultural operations line the coastal plain, the Laurel School District enrolled 199 English learners in 2014-15. One in 12 students. A decade ...
Cape Henlopen Grew 45%, and Its Schools Can't Keep Up
Most Delaware superintendents spend their winters worrying about enrollment loss. In Cape Henlopen, the problem is the opposite: where to put everyone.
One in Five Delaware Students Is Now Hispanic
In 2015, about one in six Delaware public school students was Hispanic. By 2025, it was one in five. That shift, from 21,480 to 31,113 students, represents a 44.8% increase and the addition of 9,633 s...