The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG – Waitsburg High School earned a well-deserved nod of recognition in an Aug. 10 article in The Seattle Times. The article, titled ‘Fewer Washington students who go to college need to take remedial courses,’ says that the state’s highest enrollment rate was in Waitsburg School District where 86 percent of the district’s 21 2015 graduates attended college.

Issaquah was a close second at 85 percent, followed by Mercer Island and Bellevue, which both had 81 percent of their students enroll in college. Mercer Island also had the second-lowest rate of students who enrolled in one or more remedial courses, with only five of its 124 college enrollees taking a college remediation class, according to the article written by Paige Cornwell.

The article states that the rate of Washington students who attend two-and four-year colleges after graduation has remained at about 60 percent over the last five years, but that numbers released by the state superintendent’s office suggest students becoming better prepared for college, because they are taking fewer remedial courses.

The article also states that about 44 percent of students from low-income families enrolled in one or more remedial courses, as opposed to 27 percent of students from non-low-income families.