The four-year graduation rate for the Class of 2013 rose to 61.3 percent, a figure former Mayor Michael Bloomberg released early, just before leaving office. Including August graduates, the 2013 four-year graduation rate was 66 percent, up from 64.7 percent with August grads added for 2012.

Almost one-quarter (24.9 percent) of New York City high school students graduated prepared for college and careers in 2013, a disturbingly low figure but an improvement from 16 percent in 2010, when the state began tracking this indicator.

Despite the improvements, breakouts by subgroups show stubborn, ongoing inequalities in the city’s graduation rates. The gap between black and white student graduation rates — 20 percentage points — has been unchanged for the last five years, while the gap between Hispanics and whites actually increased, from 22 points in 2012 to 23 points in 2013, even as statewide gaps narrowed slightly last year.

New York City’s English language learner graduation rates fell for the third year in a row, to 32.3 percent from 41.5 percent in 2010. Statewide ELL graduation rates also declined. “The ELL graduation rates should be a big concern,” said NYSUT Vice President Catalina Fortino, who was an expert in ELL education when she headed the UFT Teacher Centers.

Fortino said a first step would be for the state to further disaggregate ELL students into long-term ELLs, recently arrived immigrants, and students with interrupted formal educations (SIFE), to see where problems may be hidden. “The education community needs to weigh in on the proposed changes to ELL services, which the state will be putting out for public comment in July,” she said.

The news was better for students with disabilities, whose graduation rates rose to 33.2 percent, a six-year high.

College-ready, or not

College and career ready is determined by percentages of students in the class with scores of 75 or above on their English Regents exams and 80 or higher on their math Regents, meaning they do not require remedial classes to attend four-year City University colleges. The state introduced the measure after an outside investigation found that students deemed proficient on its grade 3-8 standardized tests were not on track for college-level work.

The state reported wide disparities in college-readiness by gender and race. While the overall rate was 24.4 percent by June (24.9 percent by August), the June college-ready rate for the city’s black males was 10 percent and for Hispanic males 13 percent, while for white males it was 39 percent. For females, the college-ready rate was 16 percent for blacks, 17 percent for Hispanics and 47 percent for whites.

Both the June and August graduation rates are 25-year records at least, even as the possibility of earning a lower-scoring local diploma has been phased out.