5 million more students graduated, rather than dropping out, from 2001 through 2020

  This year’s Building A Grad Nation 2023: Progress and Challenge in Raising High School Graduation Rates marks the final report to the nation on a 20-year effort to boost high school graduation rates. Co-authored by CIVIC and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Education, and sponsored by the Lumina Foundation and Hewlett Foundation, the report shows graduation rates rising from 71 percent in 2001 to 86.5 percent by the Class of 2020, translating into 5 million more students graduating, rather than dropping out, during that period.

In 2001, nearly one-third of students across the nation were dropping out of high school, as graduation rates flatlined at around 69 to 71 percent from the 1970s through the turn of the century. Multiple efforts emerged to address the challenge, including creating a common calculation of graduation rates, listening to the perspectives of students who had dropped out, identifying the 15 percent of schools where 50 percent of the nation’s dropouts were located, the spread of early warning and on-track systems, passing major federal legislation introducing graduation rate accountability, and working across politics, sectors, and areas of the country to boost high school graduation rates. 

National improvements were driven by large gains in high school graduation rates by Black, Hispanic, and low-income Americans, who also more than doubled their enrollment in post-secondary education. Although the nation fell short of its 90 percent graduation goal by 115,000 students, the nation reached an all time high of 86.5 percent in 2020, ten states reached the 90 percent goal, and another 10 states are within one percentage point of 90 percent, while 15 states needed less than 1,000 additional graduates to reach the 90 percent goal in 2020.