This report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center finds that the nation’s graduation rate has dropped for the second consecutive year, following a decade of mostly solid improvements. Although the latest decrease is considerably smaller than that found the previous year, the report shows that, on a national scale, 11,000 fewer students will earn diplomas.
Three out of every 10 students in America’s public schools fail to finish high school with a diploma, the report finds. That amounts to 1.3 million students falling through the cracks of the high school pipeline every year, or more than 7,200 students lost every day. Most nongraduates are members of historically disadvantaged minority groups. Dropouts are also more likely to have attended school in large, urban districts and to come from communities plagued by severe poverty and economic hardship.