2016 Building a Grad Nation webinar slides

Editor's Notes

• #4: 7th annual update to the nation – all worked together to define a goal, follow evidence to meet it, and stay with it over time Thank all our partners in the Alliance and supporters – ATT and its Aspire program, Target and State Farm – stayed with this challenge over time as well. Progress possible because of students, parents, educators, leaders from every sector who are relentless about helping our young people – and challenges are still quite daunting for various student subgroups to meet America’s commitment to equal opportunity. Good news, but plenty of alarm bells this year.
• #5: Both measures of graduation rates – AFGR and ACGR – show the same upward trend since 2002. The steady climb of high school grad rates became more accelerated in 2006, and in 2012, the nation reached an historic milestone by achieving an 80 percent high school graduation rate. This trend continued through 2014 – the fourth year of the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate – as the national graduation rate hit yet another record of 82.3 percent, up more than 10 percentage points from the turn of the century. All this means that since 2002, 2 million more students graduated rather than dropping out with consequences to them, economy and society.
• #6: The 2013-14 school year marks the fourth year of state graduation rate reporting in the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate era, and the first year in which all states publicly reported rates using this common measure. Of the states reporting ACGR since 2010-11, more than 90 percent have increased the number of students graduating high school in four years. Six states increased their graduation rates by 6 or more points 19 states raised rates by 3-5.9 points 13 states saw increases of 1.5-2.9 points Seven states have seen grad rate increases of 1.4 percentage points or less since 2010-11 Three states – South Dakota, Wyoming, and Arizona – have seen their rates decline since 2010-11
• #7: Hispanic/Latino students made gains of 5.3 percentage points and African American students increasing 5.5 percentage points since 2011. In earlier period they drove improvements in grad rates with 15 and 9 percentage point gains, respectively Both of these student subgroups exceeded the national rate of improvement (0.9 points) between 2013 and 2014, and with average yearly gains since 2011 averaging more than 1.3 percentage points.
• #8: Do we live in two nations? 47 percent of 2014 graduating cohort = low-income Only six states - Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Texas - have low-income graduation rates above the national average of 82.3 percent, and just five additional states graduate more than 80 percent of these students. • Nearly one-third of states graduate less than 70 percent of their low-income students. • The graduation rate gap between low-income and non-low-income students ranges from a high of 25.6 percentage points in South Dakota to a low of 4.0 percentage points in Indiana. In nearly half of all states, the gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers is 15 percentage points or greater, and in 18 additional states the gap is at least 10 points. Only eight states have a low-income/non-low-income gap less than 10 percentage points.
• #9: On-Pace/Off-Pace map Using a four-year (2011 to 2014) metric to gauge average growth, 20 states have put themselves on pace to reach 90 percent by 2020. The majority of these states started within 10 to 12 points of the goal in 2011 and steadily climbed each year. All of these states now have graduation rates greater than 83 percent and must maintain around a 1-point-per-year pace to meet the goal. Looking solely at graduation rate increases from 2013 to 2014, seven other states experienced one-year growth that exceeded the pace needed to get them to 90 percent. 21 states are off-pace. Many of these states reported rates in the 60s and 70s in 2011 and have been unable to attain a rate of growth that would put them on pace. About a quarter of the off-pace states – Hawaii, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Wyoming – started with rates in the 80s, but have not been able to make meaningful progress. This stagnation, and backsliding in some cases, shows that, for many states, having the 90 percent goal within view makes it no easier to reach.
• #10: At the national level, raising the current graduation rate of 82.3 percent to 90 percent means graduating an additional 284,591 students. To put it another way, all of the additional students nationwide needed to graduate over the next six years to reach the goal would fit into about three Rose Bowl stadiums. But simply getting to 90 percent nationally is not enough. It is critical to advancing equal opportunity that all student subgroups, especially those who have traditionally been underserved, reach a 90 percent graduation rate. For the nation to achieve a 90 percent graduation rate among its low-income students (current ACGR of 74.6 percent), about 264,000, or roughly 93 percent, of the additional graduates will need to be from this subgroup. For students with disabilities to achieve a 90 percent rate, about 117,000, or 41 percent, of the additional graduates in the Class of 2020 will need to be special education students. Twenty-three percent, or about 65,000 additional graduates, would need to be English Language Learners. For Black students to achieve a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020, about 102,000 students, or nearly 40 percent, need to be from this subgroup, and about the same percentage will need to be Hispanic/Latino.
• #11: Grads Needed to Get to 90 state map Within each state, the numbers tell a similar story. The number of additional graduates needed to reach 90 percent varies widely. In most places, reaching the goal means engaging a relatively small number of students and makes the path forward appear that much more attainable. The challenge most states need to contend with is ensuring not only that their overall graduation rate is raised to 90 percent, but that various student subgroups are also hitting that mark. This is especially true for students with disabilities and Black, Hispanic/Latino, and low-income students in nearly every state with significant populations of these student subgroups.
• #12: There are now approximately 1,000 of these high schools and less than one million students attending them – a staggering reduction from the more than 2,000 schools and 2.5 million students in them in 2002. Between 2012-13 and 2013-14, high schools graduating 67 percent or less of students dropped by 225 and the number of students enrolled in them was cut by nearly 210,000. Altogether, there were at least 1.6 million fewer students attending high schools with low graduation rates in 2014 than in 2002. Unfortunately, these students are still overwhelmingly represented in these schools. Of the roughly 924,000 students in low-graduation-rate high schools, 65 percent were low-income and 63 percent African American or Hispanic/Latino.
• #14: Of the high schools enrolling 100 or more students and graduating 67% or less of them, more than 50% were located in cities. But just a quarter of all high schools were located in urban areas.
• #15: There are more than 11,000 (60.7 percent) high schools across the country that graduated 85 percent or more of students in 2014. This means that for every low-graduation-rate high school in the nation there are more than four high-graduation-rate high schools. Of these high-graduation-rate high schools, nearly 40 percent were small high schools in rural areas, and close to 30 percent were found in suburban areas. Just 17 percent of these high-performing high schools were located in cities.
• #16: Percentage of High Schools 67% or Below, by State map The number of high schools enrolling 100 students or more and graduating 67 percent or less of students in each state varies greatly, from one each in Maine and West Virginia to 203 in Florida and 276 in New York. The percentages of these schools varies greatly as well. In two states – Alaska and New Mexico – low-grad-rate high schools are 40% or more of all high schools. 30% of high schools are low-grad-rate schools in Florida. More than a quarter of high schools were low-grad-rate schools in Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona. With the exception of Delaware, all of the states in which low-grad-rate high schools make up 20% or more of all high schools have overall grad rates in the 60s and 70s.
• #19: In terms of non-graduates, Alaska, Colorado, and Idaho had 30% or more of non-grads coming from alternative schools. Florida, Michigan, Washington, Utah, and Texas had 20% or more of non-grads coming from alternative schools.
• #20: In terms of non-grads, 43% of non-grads in Ohio came from charter schools, 37% of non-grads in Arizona came from charter schools. Between 20 and 25% of non-grads came from charter schools in Florida, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and California.
• #21: In terms of non-grads, Ohio and Idaho, had 26 and 25 percent of non-grads, respectively, coming from virtual schools. South Carolina, Arizona, Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, and Pennsylvania each had between 10 and 14 percent of non-grads coming from virtual schools.
• #23: Questions have been raised in recent years about whether schools have lowered standards to graduate more students on time. Some have also raised concerns over the reporting of graduation rates by states, and whether these numbers are being inflated. We looked at some measures of rigor, as well as enrollment and cohort data to see if states may be playing with their graduation rate numbers.