NC may asterisk graduation rate over immigration enforcement

State education officials might flag North Carolina’s high school graduation rate with an asterisk if the figure drops sharply this year, Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green told the State Board of Education on May 6. 

The reason: Possible effects from federal immigration enforcement on student attendance.

The discussion came during the board’s spring planning session in Duplin County, as members reviewed progress toward a strategic-plan goal of reaching a 92% graduation rate by 2030. The state’s most recent reported graduation rate, in 2025, was a record high.

Board Vice Chair Alan Duncan told fellow members that several school districts had reported attendance disruptions among Hispanic students.

“Many of us have heard from many of our counties that there has been some difficulty with some of our particularly Latino students who attend schools this year as a result of various other activities that have occurred,” Duncan said. “So there is some expectation, some fronts, that the graduation rate could be affected by that.”

Duncan asked whether the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI) could parse out the cause and, “if so, do we note that?”

Green said the department had been weighing options internally and with school district leaders. 

“We have heard some of those very same concerns,” Green said. “We have had conversations internally about what we might do. We’ve talked about things like putting an asterisk next to information if there’s a dramatic change. So there’s things that we’ve talked about. But until we actually see the data, we don’t want to make any move at this point.”

Green added that DPI would wait for the data before deciding on any reporting change.

Bryce Fiedler, director of the Carolinas Academic Leadership Network at the John Locke Foundation, said modifying how accountability data is reported is not unusual but carries transparency risks if not handled carefully.

“Notating data points when large, underlying changes occur isn’t uncommon, particularly if year-to-year changes are unreliable,” Fiedler said. “What matters most is that reporting remains clear and transparent. Readers should know what your asterisk indicates and whether such changes materially impacted the figures. It can be abused if not handled appropriately.”

Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has stepped up federal immigration enforcement across the country, with North Carolina immigration arrests up 162%. The Tar Heel State has been a focal point of those efforts, with “Operation Charlotte’s Web” sweeping the Charlotte area in November before moving to Raleigh, where more than 250 people were arrested across the two cities.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools reported 15% of students absent on the Monday following the operation, and Wake County Public Schools sent messages to families assuring them schools would remain “a safe, welcoming, and inclusive learning environment for every single child, regardless of immigration status.”

A separate, statewide drop of more than 15,000 in the English Learner population this year was attributed by DPI officials to a change in identification criteria, not to immigration enforcement.

Under the US Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling in Plyler v. Doe, public schools cannot deny admission to students based on immigration status.

The state’s 2025-26 cohort graduation rate is expected to be reported this summer with the broader release of state accountability data.

“NC may asterisk graduation rate over immigration enforcement” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.