Data Indicates High School Graduation Rates Are Up

By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - High school graduation is up - using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, we can track individual students who may have transferred rather than those who started as freshmen and finished four years later.

Using this new system, researchers can also break down graduation rates by states and income.

In some states, like Indiana, there was only a 1 percentage point difference in graduation rates between low income students and their higher income peers.

For students graduating with disabilities, there was wide variation. In Louisiana, 72% of students overall graduate compared with 33% in special education. In Montana, in the class of 2012, 84% of its students graduated, as did 81% of those with disabilities.

The GradNation campaign at Johns Hopkins University aims for 90% graduation rate by 2020 and optimistically notes that there are several hundred fewer "dropout factories," those where less than 60% of the kids graduate, since 2002.