Port Byron's dropout rate has more than doubled in the last year, easily outpacing every school in Cayuga County in a report released Monday by the state Education Department. See how your school performed.

According to the study, 27.2 percent of Port Byron students who entered the ninth grade in 2001 did not graduate in four years. That is significantly up from the district's 12.1 percent the year before.

Auburn's dropout rate of 18.9 percent was second in the county, but down from its 21.2 percent last year.

Port Byron Central School Superintendent Neil O'Brien said that while the numbers released by the state aren't entirely accurate, a reported 27.2 percent drop out rate “raises our level of concern.”

O'Brien said the guidance staff and principal at Port Byron Central School have been going back to “try to put names with numbers” in an attempt to learn why particular students weren't successful.

“We're trying to get as much meaning out of the data as we can,” he said.

O'Brien pointed out that some Port Byron students included in the state's study were 17 years old when they entered ninth grade and that students that age rarely graduate.

He also said mobility plays a big factor and that many students “were not our students their entire careers.” A mix-up with numbers supplied by Port Byron, O'Brien said, led to the state labeling as a dropout a student who transferred out of the district and “became valedictorian in a Syracuse-area school district.”

Auburn Enlarged City School District board member Kent Brandstetter said dropout rates reflect students having trouble meeting tougher requirements for graduation.

“As the standards and expectations for students increase, it's an inevitable tragedy that we're going to lose some students in the process. We shouldn't be losing any students, though I as a board member want all of the kids to graduate, and don't want to see any kids lost in the system.”

Statewide, better than three in 10 students in recent classes failed to graduate from high school in four years.

“These are tough numbers,” said state Education Commissioner Richard Mills. “It is unacceptable.”

The state is focusing on 127 high schools in which the graduation rate is lowest - around 40 percent.

Innovative as well as time-tested strategies are being used and will be replicated as needed to other schools, he said.

These classes that began high school in 2000 and 2001, however, are among the last groups to have begun school before

the state raised academic

standards to improve instruction beginning in phases in the late 1990s.

These groups were less prepared in their early years in primary school and entered high school less prepared for that

work than subsequent classes, he said.

Standardized test results bear that out, showing steady if slow improvements in math and English in primary and secondary schools and improvement in Regents exam scores in core subjects as well as history and other subjects.

For example, students who didn't drop out and took the Regents exams usually passed and more students are reaching higher standards and earning more Regents diplomas,

which require more and more difficult classes to be passed than a decade ago when they started school.

“They are both very challenging numbers and some very hopeful numbers,” Mills said. “These are the very children that led the Regents to approve very rigorous standards.”

“This problem is something that should focus the attention of everyone in this state,” said state schools chancellor Robert Bennett. “We must and will take additional decisive actions to solve it.”

The state Education Department figures released Monday include:

- 71 percent of students who entered high school in 2000 graduated in five years.

- 64 percent of students who entered high school in 2001 graduated in four years.

- A “major achievement gap” is evident because fewer black and Hispanic students graduated than white students.

- Suburban or low-needs schools graduated 90 percent or more on time, while some

urban districts graduated 40 percent.