ATLANTA — Six of SREB’s 16 member states beat the national public high school graduation rate, although nearly one-third of all students in SREB states fail to graduate from high school, according to Diplomas Count, a special report released today by Education Week.
While the report shows that Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, Virginia and West Virginia exceeded the national average graduation rate of 69.6 percent, all 50 states fell well short of SREB’s goal of having all students graduate from high school. Without a diploma, students are not able to fully prepare for further education, careers and the workplace. Based on the Cumulative Promotion Index developed by the EPE Research Center from 2002-2003 data, Diplomas Count mirrors similarly poor graduation rates found by other calculation methods.
“Drastically low graduation rates are the nation’s most serious educational problem, with terribly high social and economic costs to the individual and to our states,” said SREB President Dave Spence. “However, across the nation, we don’t have the sense of urgency about low graduation rates that we share on other educational issues. We must have both high achievement and high completion rates for all of our students.”
The percentage of U.S. students earning a high school diploma in the traditional four years has continued to drop since the early 1980s. The decline is especially critical for minority and male students. Gaps in graduation rates are found across racial/ethnic and gender groups, Diplomas Count shows. Nationwide, about 65 percent of male high school students graduated in 2003 compared with about 73 percent of female students. The U.S. graduation rates for minorities were even lower: about 52 percent for black students and about 56 percent for Hispanic students, compared with nearly 77 percent for white students.
The good news is that 10 SREB states surpassed the national average graduation rate for black students. Texas, the SREB state with the largest Hispanic population, beat the national average graduation rate for Hispanic students.
For the past year, high school graduation rates have been a major focus of SREB’s work. At the SREB Annual Meeting next week, SREB will help state policy-makers consider ways to improve high school graduation rates. Speakers will include SREB Senior Vice President Gene Bottoms, who leads the nation’s largest school improvement network, High Schools That Work; and Tom Vander Ark of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
SREB recommends many specific actions that states can take to increase graduation rates, including holding schools and districts accountable for bringing all groups to higher graduation targets as part of compliance with No Child Left Behind, helping students make smoother transitions from the middle grades to ninth grade, and focusing on high school reform to decrease the dropout rate, among others.
For details about all states, see Diplomas Count at www.edweek.org/dc06.
To talk with SREB policy experts about Diplomas Count or about high school improvement in SREB states, contact SREB Communications at (404) 879-5544. Also see Getting Serious About High School Graduation at www.sreb.org.
SREB, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, advises state education leaders on ways to improve education. SREB was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Each is represented by its governor and four gubernatorial appointees.
