NPR – Anya Kamenetz
“Once again this year, President Obama hailed the nation’s high school graduation rate as it reached another record high — a whopping 83 percent. “When I took office almost eight years ago, we knew that our education system was falling short,” he said at a Washington, D.C., high school in October. “I said, by 2020 I want us to be No. 1 across the board, so we got to work making real changes to improve the chances for all of our young people. … And the good news is that we’ve made real progress.” High school graduation rates in the nation’s capital, he noted, have grown faster than anywhere else in the country, from 53 percent to 69 percent.”(more)