U.S. graduation rates tick upward, report finds
More U.S. high school students are making their way to graduation, according to a new report by the Everyone Graduates Center, America’s Promise Alliance, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and Civic Enterprises. According to the report, 24 states saw their graduation rates rise between 2001 and 2009 helping get the nation closer to President Barack Obama’s goal of having the world’s most educated workforce and highest proportion of high school graduates by 2020.
“The good news is that some states have made improvements in their graduation rates, showing it can be done. But the data also indicate that if we are to meet our national goals by 2020, we will have to accelerate our rate of progress, particularly in the states that have shown little progress,” said Robert Balfanz, director of Everyone Graduates Center, Johns Hopkins University, and co-author of the Building a Grad Nation report.
The national graduation rate rose 3.5 percent between 2001 and 2009, reaching 75.5 percent. The report also found that the number of “dropout factories,” or schools that graduated 60 percent or fewer students on time, fell between 2002 and 2010. The figure fell by 457, with the rate of decline increasing after 2008, according to the report’s authors. The number of dropout factories hit 1,550 in 2010, resulting in 790,000 fewer students attending such schools when compared to 2002.
New York, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, Missouri, Alabama, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Kentucky saw the most improvement in high school graduation rates during the time studied. Meanwhile, 13 states have significant strides to make in order to reach a 90 percent high school graduation rate by 2020. Those states are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Virginia and Washington.
“In large part the battle will be won or lost in the 13 states that have the largest number of students to get back on track to graduate and need to accelerate their progress two- to three-fold in order to reach 90 percent high school graduation rates by 2020,” said John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises and another co-author of the report.
Wisconsin was the only state to have a high school graduation rate of 90 percent.
