WASHINGTON — U.S. public high schools have reached a milestone, an 80 percent graduation rate. Yet that still means 1 of every 5 students walks away without a diploma.
Citing the progress, researchers are projecting a 90 percent national graduation rate by 2020.
Their report, based on Education Department statistics from 2012, was being presented Monday at the Building a GradNation Summit.
The growth has been spurred by such factors as a greater awareness of the dropout problem and efforts by districts, states and the federal government to include graduation rates in accountability measures. Among the initiatives are closing “dropout factory” schools.
In addition, schools are taking aggressive action, such as hiring intervention specialists who work with students one-on- one, to keep teenagers in class, researchers said.
Growth in rates among black and Latino students helped fuel the gains. Most of the growth has occurred since 2006, after decades of stagnation.
“At a moment when everything seems so broken and seems so unfixable … this story tells you something completely different,” said John Gomperts, president of America’s Promise Alliance, which was founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and helped produce the report.
The rate of 80 percent is based on federal statistics primarily using a calculation by which the number of graduates in a given year is divided by the number of students who enrolled four years earlier. Adjustments are made for transfer students.
In 2008, the Bush administration ordered all states to begin using this method.
Iowa, Vermont, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Texas ranked at the top with rates at 88 percent or 89 percent. The bottom performers were Alaska, Georgia, New Mexico, Oregon and Nevada, at 70 percent or below.
Colorado’s 2012 graduation rate was 75 percent.
Idaho, Kentucky and Oklahoma were not included because they received federal permission to take longer to roll out their systems.
