An estimated 1.2 million students won’t graduate from high school on time this year, and the national graduation rate — after several years of steady improvement — has hovered near 70 percent since 2002, according to an annual report by Education Week, detailed yesterday.
The report found that South Carolina ranked the lowest with a 53.8 percent graduation rate, while Utah ranked the highest with an 83.8 percent graduation rate.
Among the nation’s 50 largest school districts, five of the 15 with the highest graduation rates were in Virginia or Maryland.
Researchers with the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center calculated graduation rates for each state and locality based on a research center formula and the most recent Department of Education data, from 2003 to 2004. It showed that three in 10 students who started ninth grade four years ago won’t receive their diploma this year, and numbers are even worse for minority boys.
Researchers found graduation rates were lower than states reported in nearly every case.
EPE Research Center director Christopher B. Swanson, who performed the analysis, said the graduation crisis of recent years has taken many by surprise because “for decades we weren’t paying attention to graduation rates at all.”
The report also analyzed distribution of jobs nationwide and state by state, and found that at least some college education is required to earn a decent wage in the United States.
Among workers earning a median annual income of about $36,000, 37 percent have some college education and 26 percent have a bachelor’s degree.
Employers complain more about a lack of “soft” job skills — thinking critically, working well with others, writing and speaking well — than they do about poor academic skills, the report found. It cited a “severe mismatch” between local labor markets and education levels in many cities. In the District, for example, 15.7 percent of the labor force occupies job positions that largely require a bachelor’s degree, but more than four in 10 of the District’s public school students don’t earn their high school diploma in four years.
The report was funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also is funding a Strong American Schools campaign to push education reform to the forefront in the 2008 presidential elections.
Yesterday, campaign Chairman Roy Romer called the Education Week report “explosive” and said presidential candidates must tackle why American youths aren’t prepared for the job market.
“This has received no discussion — almost none — in the debates for the highest office of this nation,” he said.
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