Hillsborough County Public Schools posts record 90.9% graduation rate; district credits data systems and flexible pathways

Hillsborough County Public Schools reported a record-high graduation rate of 90.9 percent this year — and 93 percent among traditional high schools — officials said on the district podcast More to the Story.

"It's such a team effort when it comes to graduation rate," Christina Rayburn, the district's executive director for high school education, said on the episode. Rayburn described coordinated systems at both school and district levels that identify students who are falling behind and provide targeted supports.

Rayburn said the district implemented new reports inside its student information system so school staff can track credits, grade-point averages, benchmark performance and attendance to flag at-risk students. Those data inform quarterly "graduation cohort conversation" meetings where district and school teams review individual students and plan interventions.

"We asked [the focus team] to help us create reports inside our student information system that schools would be able to access ... so they could track student progress in terms of graduation," Rayburn said. The district uses that information to deploy credit recovery, grade-enhancement courses, extended learning and targeted reading and math instruction.

Officials described several pathways that help students meet requirements. Rayburn cited state-provided options, including an 18-credit Excel diploma pathway and the Grad Flex program for English-language learners, alongside district offerings such as credit recovery, a graduation acceleration program (tied to adult-education co-enrollment), and full- and part-time virtual options through Hillsborough Virtual.

The podcast included concrete examples of staff efforts. Rayburn highlighted Ross Anderson, a district team member who tutors students, proctors concordant tests on weekends and in at least one instance used his personal credit card to cover assessment costs for students who could not pay. "He puts his heart and soul into students," Rayburn said.

Host Deborah Bellanti also shared a principal-tutoring story in which a student who struggled with a single state benchmark received weekly tutoring from a principal and later passed the test, preserving a path to college and scholarship opportunities.

Rayburn said the district moved quickly this year to adopt a state-introduced concordant test as an additional route to meeting graduation benchmarks, giving students "one more pathway to graduation." She emphasized that the graduation-rate number represents hundreds of individual students: "every percentage point, that's hundreds of students."

Bellanti translated the rate change into student impact, saying the increase equated to about 910 more students who will walk the stage this year compared with the previous year.

The episode closed with Rayburn and Bellanti crediting teachers, counselors, principals, social workers, ESOL and ESE specialists and a district grad-rate team that meets regularly to coordinate resources and creative pathways. The district framed the milestone as evidence of sustained attention to early identification and individualized support rather than a single policy shift.

The podcast did not provide independent verification of the rate beyond the district announcement, nor did it provide a breakdown by school, subgroup or year-over-year methodology; those details were not specified on the episode.