Progress and Challenge in Raising High School Graduation Rates

Authored by Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, and released annually in partnership with the Alliance for Excellent Education and America’s Promise Alliance, the Building a Grad Nation report examines both progress and challenges toward reaching the GradNation campaign goal of a national on-time graduation rate of 90 percent.

 

For much of the 20^th century, high school graduation was seen as the finish line between childhood and adulthood and a distinct marker of success in education. Completing the K-12 experience and earning a high school diploma meant that a young person was ready to go out into the workforce and earn a livable wage or, in the case of the select few, enroll in college.

The growth of the knowledge economy in the 21^st century redefined a high school diploma as a necessary passport to the next level of training and education. Students who graduate from high school are no longer guaranteed the high wage industrial and manufacturing jobs that had been available to many in the past. Nonetheless, as both K-12 and higher education wrestle with how best to prepare students for an ever-changing future, what is certain is that most young people now need more than a high school diploma to secure a more promising tomorrow.

Young people who do not graduate high school are less likely to be employed, earn less income, have worse health and lower life expectancy, are less likely to be civically engaged, and are more likely to be involved with the criminal justice system and require social services. Without some training beyond high school, securing a stable, well-paying job is very unlikely.

At each step along the continuum, we can identify students who are falling behind. From the start, Black and Hispanic children and those growing up in poverty, are more likely than their peers to be off track and those gaps remain well into adulthood. Black and Hispanic students are more likely to live in poverty than their white peers (36 percent of Black children and 30 percent of Hispanic children compared to 12 percent of white children), and for young people of color that also live in poverty, the likelihood of missing key indicators of educational progress is even greater.

This year, the Building a Grad Nation report continues to call out the disparities in high school graduation rates for specific student subgroups and for the low-performing schools many of them attend, which are disproportionately affected by poverty, structural inequities, and inequitable access to resources, supports, and opportunities.

The nation continues to see steady growth in high school graduation rates, but it remains off pace to reaching the 90 percent goal—a goal that would require graduating about 219,000 more young people on time than graduated in 2016 and nearly doubling the annual rate of gain in recent years through 2020.
The story behind graduation rate gains can largely be seen at the state level:

• In 2011, five states reported graduation rates below 70 percent. In 2016, no state had a graduation rate below 71 percent.
• In 2011, no state had achieved a 90 percent graduation rate, and only nine had a graduation rate above 85 percent. In 2016, two states reached the 90 percent goal, and 25 reported a graduation rate above 85 percent.
• Seventeen states—many with large populations of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students—have largely driven progress nationally since 2011 and helped narrow national racial and income graduation rate gaps.
• Several Midwestern and plains states that had graduation rates above the national average in 2011 have experienced below average rates of growth, as have nine other states that began with rates above 85 percent. These slowdowns should serve as a wake-up call to all states, even those within sight of 90 percent, that raising graduation rates will take a sustained, consistent effort.

Within the report, district-level patterns (of school districts with at least 1,300 students) are also examined to provide greater understanding of how widespread graduation rate improvement is within each state and which school districts are having the most impact on state rates.