New York built five ways to graduate. In 96 districts, no one finished any of them.

Only 9.7% of New York graduates complete a CTE, STEM, civic or arts pathway. 96 districts recorded zero completers. Every figure from the NYSED Graduation Pathways release.

New York does not require a student to graduate through the humanities. Since 2015 the state has offered specialised pathways — career and technical education, STEM, civic readiness, the arts, world languages — each a route to the same diploma. The idea was that a student who wants to build things, or code, or run a lab, should be able to finish school doing it.

Across the 515 New York districts that graduated at least 50 students, 15,862 of 163,411 graduates completed one. That is 9.7%. Nine in ten New York graduates still finish by the default route.

In 96 districts, not one student completed one

96 districts — 16,291 graduates between them — recorded zero completers of any specialised pathway. Not a low number. Zero.

These are not small rural districts where the option might be impractical. The largest is Smithtown CSD, which graduated 667 students. Arlington Central School District graduated 599, Levittown UFSD 581. They sit mostly in Mid Hudson (22 districts) and Long Island (20).

Largest districts with zero specialised-pathway completers

Smithtown CSD
667
Arlington Central School District
599
Levittown UFSD
581
Connetquot CSD
459
Lakeland Central School District
448
Bay Shore UFSD
405

Bars show the size of each graduating cohort. Every one of these students finished by the default humanities route. The line marks the average cohort size across all 515 districts.

NYSED Graduation Pathways Database

What the number does and does not say

This is completion data, not a course catalogue. A district with zero completers may well offer a CTE programme that no student finished this year, and the state release does not distinguish the two. What it establishes is narrower and still worth knowing: in these districts, the specialised route existed on paper and no graduate took it to the end.

That distinction matters enough that we will not write the other version of this sentence. Elsewhere on this site we recently stopped publishing a federal "not offered" flag for exactly this reason — it could not survive being checked against our own data. We would rather say the smaller true thing.

Where students do specialise

At the other end, Royalton-Hartland Central School District sent 99% of its graduates through a specialised pathway, and 108 districts recorded completers in four or more distinct pathway types. Statewide the most common is stem — science (312 districts), then career development and occupational studies (238) and career and technical education (176).

For parents, and for newsrooms

If you are choosing between districts, this is a question worth asking at the open evening: does anyone here actually finish the CTE or STEM pathway, or is it listed and unused? The answer for your district is on its page, with the state filing it came from.

Every figure here is from the NYSED Graduation Pathways Database. It is public, it is free to use, and the per-district numbers are already published across this site. If you are covering a district we have not named, it is there — or ask and we will pull it.

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