Graduation rate for US high-schoolers falls for second straight year

The national high school graduation rate has slipped in recent years, despite an array of public and private efforts to boost the percentage of students going on to college. But some districts are beating the odds, succeeding with many students who otherwise may have fallen through the cracks.

The percent of students earning a standard diploma in four years shifted from 69.2 percent in 2006 to 68.8 percent in 2007, according to an analysis of the most recent data in “Diplomas Count 2010.” It was the second consecutive year of decline, says the report, which was released Thursday by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center, a nonprofit in Bethesda, Md.

That translates to 11,000 fewer graduates in 2007 than in 2006. At its peak in 1969, the national graduation rate was 77 percent.

“The progress on graduation rates has stalled.... We need to ramp up efforts on ... holding schools accountable and [promoting] interventions that will actually address the problem,” says Lyndsay Pinkus, director of strategic initiatives at the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington policy group that promotes high school reform.

On the more hopeful side, the report identifies 21 big-city “overachievers” that posted much higher graduation rates than would be expected based on a range of factors including demographics and poverty. Five such districts outpaced expectations by 18 percentage points or more: Newport-Mesa Unified in California; David Douglas in Portland, Ore.; Texarkana Independent in Texas; Memphis City in Tennessee; and Visalia Unified in California.

At Newport-Mesa, 86 percent graduated within four years, compared with the 57 percent that researchers calculated for the “expected” graduation rate. The district’s 22,000 students cover the gamut of socioeconomic backgrounds in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. About 40 percent are Latino.

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