The nation received some good news last week: The achievement gap is finally closing as minority and low-income students continue to drive improving high school graduation rates. Such progress was unimaginable in 2001 when No Child Left Behind was launched. High school graduation rates had reached their modern low of 70 percent and had been unmovable for the previous 30 years. Only about 60 percent of low-income, African-American and Latino students were graduating from high school, and whole communities were in danger of being cut off from the 21st century.
Fast forward to 2013 when high school graduation rates reached an all-time high of more than 81 percent. Latino and African- American graduation rates have improved by more than 15 and 10 percentage points, respectively. Even more remarkable: These gains occurred while graduation requirements increased, and more minority and low-income students succeeded on Advanced Placement exams. The greatest improvements occurred since 2008 despite skyrocketing childhood poverty due to the recession.
This dramatic reversal in rates and achievement did not just happen – it occurred only in communities that worked on the problem. Rates and achievement improved because we knew much more about who was dropping out and why, their schools and the signs of trouble. We also learned more about how to improve or replace schools with low graduation rates and how to provide students with the support to stay on track. Graduation rates took off after 2008 when two other key drivers of progress were added – intensified federal accountability and increased federal support.
In 2008, in the last days of the Bush Administration, the U.S. Department of Education issued regulations that affirmed a consistent calculation of high school graduation rates across the country and signaled to all high schools that improving those rates mattered. Previously, high schools had the option of focusing on other outcomes or activities. The power of federal accountability to focus attention on key issues is perhaps its greatest strength. Here it signaled that high schools needed to make graduation the norm for all students. No longer was it acceptable for schools to function as “dropout factories” – the small group of schools that drove the dropout crisis and were almost exclusively attended by low-income and minority students.