Grandview C-4^↗ET has not had a good year in six. The Kansas City-area suburban district's four-year graduation rate has declined every single year since 2019: 82.7 percent, 81.8, 74.6, 74.1, 74.0, 73.9, 72.5 percent. The six-year consecutive decline, totaling 10.2 percentage points, is the longest active streak among Missouri districts with cohorts above 100 students.

The decline is not a small-sample artifact. Grandview's 2025 graduating class had 324 students. And it is not a pandemic story. The rate was already falling before COVID hit, and it continued falling after the worst disruptions passed.

The suburban context

What makes Grandview's trajectory especially troubling is its geographic context. The district sits in the southern Kansas City suburbs, surrounded by some of the highest-performing districts in the state.

Blue Springs R-IV^↗ET, 20 minutes east, graduated 98.5 percent of its 2025 cohort. Raymore-Peculiar R-II^↗ET, directly south, hit 94.3 percent. Lee's Summit R-VII^↗ET, to the east, posted 94.5 percent. All three are at or near record highs.

Grandview, at 72.5 percent, trails Blue Springs by 26 points. The gap is widening. In 2019, Grandview was 12 points behind Blue Springs. In 2025, the distance has more than doubled.

Who is not graduating

At 72.5 percent with a 324-student cohort, approximately 89 students in Grandview's 2025 class did not finish on time. That is a significant share of a single high school's graduating class.

The district's cohort has fluctuated between roughly 285 and 340 students over the data window, large enough to produce stable rates but small enough that a few dozen students can shift the percentages. Still, the relentlessness of the decline, six consecutive years without a single uptick, points to something systemic rather than random variation.

What six years means

A six-year decline streak that predates the pandemic, spans it, and continues after it is difficult to explain away. It cannot be blamed on COVID alone. It cannot be blamed on a single bad cohort. A student who entered Grandview as a freshman in 2021 has spent their entire high school career in a district with a declining graduation rate. A student entering as a freshman this fall will have no memory of a Grandview that was improving.

The district sits at 72.5 percent in a metro area where its peers graduate above 94 percent. The question is not why Grandview is below average but why the gap with its neighbors keeps growing.

Grandview C-4 did not respond to a request for comment.

Data source

Analysis based on graduation data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.