And an unprecedented number of diplomas:
Stephanie Simon reports that the high-school graduation rate in the US has topped 80 percent for the first time in history, and that “if states can keep up their rapid pace of improvement, the rate could hit 90 percent by 2020”:
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.
However, as the above chart makes clear, not all the news is good:
[W]hile low-income and minority students have made a lot of progress, wide gaps in achievement persist. Graduation rates increased 15 percentage points for Hispanic students and 9 points for African-American students from 2006 to 2012. But only 76 percent of Hispanic students and 68 percent of African-American students graduated in 2012, compared with 81 percent of white students, the report said. …
[In addition,] disparities are still great between special education students in different states. Students with disabilities make up about 15 percent of students nationally and have a graduation rate 20 percentage points lower than the overall rate. In Montana, 81 percent of high school students with disabilities graduated, while in Nevada, only 24 percent did.
Chris Kardish has more on the variations at the state level:
Overall graduation rates in states range from 59 percent in Nevada to 93 percent in Vermont. A number of states are graduating even low-income students above the 80-percent mark, including Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, Tennessee and Indiana. For other states, the graduation rate even among students who aren’t living in poverty stands below 80 percent. Those include Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Tennessee in particular has been a leader in raising graduation rates. The state boosted graduation rate 17 percent from 2003 to 2010 and reached 87 percent in 2012.
(Graph from Building A Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending The High-School Dropout Epidemic)
The Dish 