The Story Behind The Record-High Graduation Rate
The U.S. high school graduation rate was 81 percent in 2013, the most recent year in which federal data are available.
In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama had some sure-fire applause lines: "More of our kids are graduating than ever before" and "Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high."
Which raised some interesting questions: "Is that really true?" and "Why?" and "How do we know?" and "So what?"
A seed was planted that grew into our project this week examining that number. Our reporting shows many of the individual stories behind a single statistic: 81 percent, the current U.S. graduation rate.
But in the course of pulling this project together, our team fell into a rabbit hole over something that doesn't often get attention: the origin of the statistic itself. It turns out to be a fascinating story, and not just for data wonks. It's a story of collaboration across the political aisle, heroic efforts and millions of dollars spent by state governments, and dogged researchers uncovering new insights that arguably changed the lives of tens of thousands of young people.
Many individuals worked hard, and worked together, to make the nation do a better job counting high school graduates. The effort had complex — sometimes contradictory — results.
The ABCs And No Child Left Behind
When we say 81 percent is an all-time high, let's put that in context for a moment.
For most of American history, high school was a rare achievement — one, by the way, that qualified you for a white-collar job.
Estimates vary depending on the method used, but generally speaking, the graduation rate didn't exceed 50 percent of the population until 1940. It peaked at the end of the 1960s, but continued to undulate, hitting the doldrums between 1995 and 1999.Historically, racial and ethnic minorities trailed behind.
While not quite a historic low, the "dropout crisis" was getting plenty of attention in 2002. That was the year of the No Child Left Behind Act, when the federal government got involved. The law required states to make measurable progress on high school graduation rates or face sanctions such as a loss of funds for poor students.
And it wasn't just a matter of legislation. New research was influencing the public discussion, creating a sense of urgency around high school completion.
Elaine Allensworth at the University of Chicago published work identifying what was later called the early warning ABCs: Attendance, Behavior and Course Performance, which reliably predict graduation by freshman year.
Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University singled out the nation's "dropout factories." At almost 1,000 high schools nationwide, they said, your chance of graduating was no more than 50-50.
On the economics front, "We knew that 63 percent of jobs in the next decade would require some postsecondary education," says Sunny Deye, who works on education policy for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "There was an understanding that the way we were preparing kids for the 21st century economy needed to change. We had to shift the paradigm from allowing some kids to drop out to recognizing that a high school diploma was now the bar."
So the game was on. States had a legislative imperative to raise graduation rates; they knew where to target intervention (early on, and at failing schools); and they knew they would feel it economically if they didn't.
But there was a problem. The early 2000s were a dark time for state education statistics. States could report high school graduation rates any old way they pleased, and many did. Just to take one example, at the end of the 20th century, "North Carolina was reporting a four-year high school graduation rate in the high 90s," says The Story Behind The Record-High Graduation Rate : NPR Ed : NPR:
