National Graduation Continues Decline, While Kentucky Improves

Decline from a high of 77% in 1969

to 68.8% in 2007

It's time once again for Ed Week's annual Diplomas Count report on nationwide trends in high school graduation.

This year's report, titled "Graduation by the Numbers—Putting Data to Work for Student Success" shows that today’s graduation climate is a tough one, particularly for minority students.

In today's climate public school districts are collecting a variety of student-performance data, in an effort to predict who is most likely to drop out and how to prevent it.

Following a decade of solid improvement this year's report shows the national graduation rate at 68.8 percent for the class of 2007, the most recent year for which data are available. That represents a four-tenths of a percentage point drop from the class of 2006; which followed the nearly point-and-a-half drop from 2005 to 2006. Graduation gaps between students in different demographic groups persist.

While three-quarters of white and Asian students earn diplomas, that percentage drops to , 56 percent for Latinos, 54 percent for African-Americans and 51 percent for Native Americans. Females graduate at a higher rate than males, about 66 percent for males to 73 percent for females. Historically disadvantaged minority males graduate at or below the 50 percent mark.

The news for Kentucky is better. 71.8 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated - three points higher than the national average - an improvement of 2.2 points over the prior decade.

Subgroup graduation rates for Kentucky:

Males = 68.2

Females = 76.2

Asian = 80.8

Hispanic = 56.9

Black = 60.5

White = 73.2