Five Covenant-branded charter academies reported four-year graduation rates below 22% in Michigan's 2025 data. Their published cohorts totaled 631 students. The rates ranged from 3.0% at Kalamazoo Covenant Academy to 21.2% at Saginaw Covenant Academy.

The rates and cohort sizes are source-published. Michigan suppressed the graduate count for Kalamazoo and Muskegon, so those two counts require a separate explanation rather than being treated as either published values or zeros.

Five reported rates

Academy	Graduation rate	Published cohort	Graduate count
Kalamazoo Covenant Academy	3.0%	67	2*
Muskegon Covenant Academy	8.2%	61	5*
Covenant Schools Detroit	9.4%	298	28
Covenant High School Grand Rapids	17.6%	125	22
Saginaw Covenant Academy	21.2%	80	17

* The source suppresses these graduate counts. Two and five are the only whole numbers that reproduce the respective published rate and cohort after rounding to the source's two-decimal precision.

Published counts plus those two unique whole-number implications total 74 graduates from the combined cohort of 631, or 11.7%. The arithmetic leaves 557 cohort members who were not counted as four-year graduates. The graduation file does not say whether an individual later graduated, remained enrolled, transferred, or left school, so it cannot support a more specific claim about those students.

The current program context

The 2025 data uses the names Kalamazoo Covenant Academy and Muskegon Covenant Academy. The schools' current websites use Kalamazoo Prep Academy and Muskegon Lakeshore High School & Career Center.

Those websites describe alternative diploma and credit-recovery programs. That is suggestive context for why comparison with a comprehensive high school needs caution, not direct evidence explaining any academy's reported rate.

The pattern predates 2025

Selected checkpoints show low combined rates across different reporting years:

Reporting year	Covenant academies reporting	Published cohort	Published plus uniquely implied graduates	Combined rate
2018	4	576	92	16.0%
2020	5	595	57	9.6%
2025	5	631	74	11.7%

These are checkpoints, not a continuous annual trend. Suppressed individual counts in 2018 and 2020 were handled with the same uniqueness test used for 2025. The combined rate rose from 2020 to 2025 but remained below its 2018 level.

Michigan's statewide four-year graduation rate was 84.0% in 2025. Among district reporting rows with positive published cohorts, 12 had rates below 25%; the five Covenant-branded academies accounted for five of those rows. That comparison locates the reported rates within the state file. It does not measure student need, program effectiveness, or the outcomes students would have had elsewhere.

By the numbers: Five Covenant-branded charter academies reported a combined 2025 cohort of 631 and rates from 3.0% to 21.2%. Published graduate counts plus two uniquely implied whole-number counts total 74, producing a combined rate of 11.7%.

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