Diplomas Count 2009 Explores College Readiness in the States

Diplomas Count 2009, the most recent edition of an annual report from higher education nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education, reports on high school graduations rates and the sticky issues of how to define and measure college readiness. The report finds encouraging increases in the national average graduation rate, and promising developments in twenty states to define what constitutes college readiness using academic indicators. The report also examines the high school graduation rates in the nation’s fifty largest school districts.

FINDINGS

Nationwide Graduation Rates

• The national average high school graduation rate rose 2.8 percentage points between 1996 and 2006 (the last year for which data was available)—from 66.4 to 69.2 percent.
• New Jersey was the highest-performing state in 2006 with a high school graduation rate of 82.1 percent, while Nevada was the lowest-performing state (47.3 percent).
• South Carolina showed the largest increase in graduation rates between 1996 and 2006 (13.1 percentage points), while Nevada showed the largest drop (23.1 percentage points).

Statistics in At-Risk Districts

• Improvement in graduation rates between 1996 and 2006 was higher than the national average (2.8 percentage points) in school districts with historically low rates of graduation—majority minority districts improved by 2.9 percentage points, urban districts improved 3.1 percentage points, and the largest school districts improved 3.4 percentage points.
• The graduation rates for African American students nationwide increased 2.4 percentage points between 1996 and 2006, from 48.8 percent to 51.2 percent. Hispanic students showed a 1.7 percentage-point increase, from 53.5 percent to 55.0 percent.

Defining College Readiness

• Twenty states currently have definitions of “college readiness” to provide a road map toward college for high school students; 11 more states are in the process of developing definitions.
• These definitions include academic-content standards in 14 states, college-preparatory courses in 13 states, specific test scores in 8 states, and narrative definitions of college-ready skills in 7 states. Thirteen of the twenty states use multifaceted definitions of college readiness.
• Twenty-four states have high school exit exams that students must pass to graduate. Twenty states base these exams on at least a tenth-grade standard, while the remaining four require lower than tenth-grade standards to be met.

The entire report may be viewed online.

DID YOU KNOW?

• More than 2,000 school districts exceeded graduation-rate expectations for the class of 2006 by at least 10 percentage points.
• More than one million students nationwide (1,286,915) failed to graduate in the class of 2009.
• The largest five school districts in the country are: New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Clark County, Nevada.