Fingerlakes1.com Menu Earlier this month the state’s Education Department released graduation rates for districts across the board. The news was good: Graduation rates ticked upward to 84.8% in New York State. It reflected a 1.4 percentage point increase from year prior. It also showed a strong trend upward from the group of students who graduated a decade ago – when the state’s graduation rate sat at 76.8%. Dr. Christopher Brown, who serves as superintendent of the Marcus Whitman Central School District says graduation data is wonderful, but paints an incomplete picture. In fact, every superintendent we talked to shared that sentiment.