By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's high school
graduation rate is the highest since 1976, but more than a fifth of
students are still failing to get their diploma in four years, the
Education Department said in a study released Tuesday.
Officials said the steady rise of students
completing their education is a reflection of the struggling economy and
a greater competition for new jobs.
"If you drop out of high school, how many good jobs
are there out there for you? None. That wasn't true 10 or 15 years
ago," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview with The
Associated Press.
The national dropout rate was about 3 percent
overall, down from the year before. Many students who don't receive
their diplomas in four years stay in school, taking five years or more
to finish their coursework.
Some 3.1 million students nationwide earned their
high school diplomas in the spring of 2010, with 78 percent of students
finishing on time. That's the best since a 75 percent on-time graduation
rate during the 1975-76 academic year.
The only better rate was 79 percent in 1969-70, a figure the department wouldn't vouch for.
There were tremendous differences among the states
in 2010. Fifty-eight percent of students in Nevada and 60 percent in
Washington, D.C., completed their high school education in four years.
By comparison, 91 percent of students in Wisconsin and Vermont did,
according to the report.
Graduation rates increased by more than a
percentage point in 38 states between 2009 and 2010, the study found.
Only the District of Columbia saw its graduation rates decline between
by greater than a percentage point during those years.
Among the most significant factors of the increase
was the dire U.S. economy after the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. During
the 2009-10 academic year, unemployment ranged from 9.4 percent to 10
percent.
"When I grew up on the South Side of Chicago it
wasn't great, but I had lots of friends who dropped out and they could
go work in the stockyards or steel mills and they could buy a home,
support a family, do OK," Duncan said.
But those jobs are gone and won't come back, he said.
California, the nation's largest public school
system by enrollment, led the nation in new graduates in 2010, turning
out almost 405,000. It also produced the most dropouts: almost 93,000.
That translated to a rate of about 5 percent, above the national
average.
During the 2009-10 academic year, some 514,000
students dropped out of high school nationwide. Still, the rate declined
from 4 percent during the seven previous academic years, when data was
sometimes incomplete or represented averages of states that reported
figures.
Nationally, students were most likely to drop out
of high school during their senior year, with roughly one in 20 quitting
before graduation day. In every state, males were more likely to drop
out.
Arizona had the highest dropout rate, at 8 percent,
followed by Mississippi at 7 percent. Washington, D.C., schools also
posted a 7 percent dropout rate, the Education Department projected
based on previous years' reporting.
Mississippi, New Mexico and Wyoming had dropout
rates rise more than one percentage point, while Delaware, Illinois and
Louisiana saw noticeable decreases. Delaware dropped from about 5
percent to 4 percent. Illinois dropped from roughly 12 percent to 3
percent. And Louisiana dropped from 7 percent to 5 percent.
"The trends are hopeful but our high school dropout
rate is still unsustainably high and it's untenable in many of our
African-American and Latino communities. We have a long way to go here,"
Duncan said.
Nationally, white and Asian and Pacific Islander
students were among the least likely to leave school without a degree,
with only 2 percent dropout rates. Hispanic students posted a 5 percent
dropout rate, followed by blacks at 6 percent and American Indians and
Alaska Natives at 7 percent.
"There's no young person who aspires to be a high
school dropout," Duncan said. "When someone drops out, it's a symptom of
a problem. It's not the problem itself. Something has gone radically
wrong."
Copyright 2013 The
Associated Press modified.
