The high school graduation rate has topped 80 percent for the first time in U.S. history — and if states can keep up their rapid pace of improvement, the rate could hit 90 percent by 2020, according to federal data released Monday.
The improvement has been driven by steep gains among African-American and Hispanic students and by progress in shutting down hundreds of troubled urban schools dubbed “dropout factories.” And it’s not confined to one region of the country. Rural states such as Iowa, Vermont and Nebraska are among the best at keeping kids in school until graduation — but other top performers include Texas, Tennessee and Missouri, all of which serve large numbers of low-income students in densely populated cities.
The practical result: Over the past decade, 1.7 million more students received diplomas than would have been expected if graduation rates had remained flat.
“This is really, really good news,” said John Gomperts, the president of America’s Promise Alliance, a coalition of nonprofits, businesses and educators focused on raising the graduation rate. “For a country that can feel like it’s struggling to make progress, this is a pretty big story of positive change.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Monday hailed the new data at a “Building a Grad Nation” summit hosted by America’s Promise. The group released a report detailing state-by-state performance, based on 2012 data.
“Even as we celebrate, we all know we have to push beyond that 80 percent,” Duncan said. He emphasized that high school diplomas are not the finish line, telling students they will need some form of post-secondary education to succeed in the global economy.
He warned schools that the focus shouldn’t be on handing out diplomas, but on teaching students the skills they need to prepare them for college or technical school.
“Ultimately, what our children need isn’t a little bit more of the same, it’s a true sea change that alters the odds of opportunity,” Duncan said.
And the strong national gains mask sharp disparities between states — and between groups of students.
In Nevada, fewer than one in four students with disabilities earns a high school diploma. In Montana, 81 percent do.
In Minnesota, just 59 percent of low-income students graduate, compared with 87 percent of their wealthier peers. The disparity between income groups is almost as big in Colorado, Connecticut, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Connecticut Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor noted that the state has made some progress: Graduation rates jumped more than 6 percent for low-income students in 2012. But that only brought them up to a 70 percent graduation rate — compared to a 94 percent rate for their more affluent peers. “There remains much more work to do,” Pryor said. To make up ground, the state is focusing on chronically absent students. It’s also pushing to expand choice by introducing more magnet and charter schools in a bid to keep more teenagers engaged.
The report points out that gaps in student performance are not inevitable. It highlights Indiana, Texas and Hawaii as success stories. The graduation rates for low-income students in those states nearly match the overall graduation rate. Montana, Arkansas, Kansas and Texas get shout-outs as well for keeping more than three in four students with disabilities on paths to diplomas.
“One of the most compelling messages to come out of this is that we don’t have a chronically un-fixable problem of poverty or disability or other circumstances of birth,” said John Bridgeland, CEO of the public policy firm Civic Enterprises and a co-author of the report.
