Education Next – Chad Aldeman
“Something amazing is going on with high school graduation rates. In the 1990’s public high school graduation rates actually fell, from 74 percent in 1990 to 72 percent in 2000. But in the mid-2000’s they started to rise, and they really took off after NCLB’s accountability provisions took effect in 2006. We hit an all-time high in 2009, and we’ve made new highs every year since. Today, the national high school graduation rate sits at 81 percent. The overall trend is great, but as the 2015 Grad Nation report shows, we’re also seeing big increases for historically disadvantaged groups. In just the last two years alone, the black-white gap closed by 1.1 percentage points, and the Hispanic-white gap closed by 1.6 percentage points. We’ve seen similar progress from students with disabilities, Limited English Proficiency students, and low-income students.”(more)