Washington's state-weighted average graduation rate is 84.5%. Selah, a Yakima Valley district of about a thousand high-school students, tops the state at 97.7%. The full leaderboard mixes the obvious Eastside giants with several small districts in the Yakima Valley, the Cascades foothills, and south Sound suburbs.
Published May 14, 2026graduation ratedistrictsrankings
97.7%
Top district graduation rate in Washington — Selah School District (Yakima County). State weighted average: 84.5%.
Washington reports a four-year cohort graduation rate for every public high school in the state. Roll that up to the district level — weighting by cohort size so a 600-student district counts more than a 50-student one — and you get a cleaner picture of which districts get their kids across the stage.
The state's enrollment-weighted average is 84.5%. The top of the list runs about thirteen points above that.
Washington's 20 highest-graduating school districts (cohort-weighted four-year graduation rate, 2024-25)
Selah SD (Yakima County)
97.7%
White River SD (Buckley)
96.9%
Issaquah SD
96.4%
Snoqualmie Valley SD
96.3%
University Place SD
96.2%
Mercer Island SD
96.2%
La Center SD
95.5%
Lake Stevens SD
95.0%
Northshore SD
94.9%
Riverview SD
94.8%
Prosser SD (Yakima Valley)
94.3%
Montesano SD
94.0%
Lake Washington SD
94.0%
Orting SD
93.9%
Ridgefield SD
93.8%
East Valley SD (Yakima)
93.6%
Sumner-Bonney Lake SD
93.5%
Tahoma SD
93.4%
Oak Harbor SD
93.1%
Ephrata SD
92.5%
OSPI Washington State Report Card, 2024-25. Restricted to districts with a graduating cohort ≥40.
What the top of the list has in common
Three patterns: the obvious Eastside giants (Issaquah, Lake Washington, Northshore, Mercer Island — affluent, well-funded, large); a cluster of mid-sized Cascade-foothills suburbs (Snoqualmie Valley, Lake Stevens, Tahoma, Sumner-Bonney Lake — the kinds of places that boomed in the last 15 years); and a Yakima Valley contingent (Selah, Prosser, East Valley) that punches well above what its demographic profile would predict.
The bottom of the comparable-size list
Looking just at districts with a graduating cohort of 200 or more — to avoid distorting the picture with tiny districts — the lowest non-specialty rates sit about 15 points below the state average:
Lower-graduating large districts (cohort ≥200), 2024-25
Aberdeen SD
69.0%
Marysville SD
70.7%
Clover Park SD
71.5%
Bremerton SD
72.8%
Highline SD
73.2%
Centralia SD
73.5%
Port Angeles SD
74.0%
Edmonds SD
75.6%
OSPI Washington State Report Card, 2024-25. Excludes Quillayute Valley (a coastal SD with a large alternative-program cohort) and any technical-college districts.
These are mostly districts where chronic absenteeism, post-pandemic, has been worst — Marysville and Highline have been working through the recovery for several years; Aberdeen's industrial base on the coast has been hollowing out for longer. Attendance recovery is the leading indicator most of these districts watch.
This is a district aggregate, not a school comparison. Individual high schools within a district can sit well above or below the district number — a comprehensive HS in Issaquah SD with a 99% rate and an alternative HS with a 60% rate average to the district's 96.4%.
Share / cite this
Washington's state-weighted average graduation rate is 84.5%. The top: 1) Selah (Yakima) 97.7% 2) White River (Buckley) 96.9% 3) Issaquah 96.4% 4) Snoqualmie Valley 96.3% 5) University Place 96.2% 6) Mercer Island 96.2%. Three Yakima Valley districts crack the top 20.
Source: WA K12 Academic Atlas · https://waschools.org/research/highest-graduating-districts/
Methodology
Source is the OSPI four-year cohort graduation rate, surfaced through the Washington State Report Card and the WA K12 Academic Atlas (grad_rate field, with grad_cohort as the denominator). We aggregate to the district level by summing graduates (rate × cohort) and dividing by total cohort, restricted to districts with a graduating cohort ≥40 (128 districts qualify; the state weighted average across all is 84.5%). The "bottom large districts" chart uses a cohort cutoff of ≥200 and excludes Quillayute Valley SD, where the published number reflects a large alternative-program cohort, and Renton Technical College, which appears in the source as a district but is not a comprehensive K-12 entity. School-level rates roll up into district rates without any adjustment for alternative or option schools, so districts that operate large alternative HS sites read a couple of points lower than their comprehensive HS would in isolation.
Sources
OSPI Washington State Report Card — four-year cohort graduation rate, 2024-25
These figures come from the WA K12 Academic Atlas — an interactive map of every K-12 school in Washington, assembled from twelve public data sources. Browse the map · see the rankings. Reporters: see the note on the research index.