U.S. Lagging in Graduation Rate, Report Says

By Mary Ann Zehr

The United States spends more per pupil than most other industrialized countries, but it isn't faring as well as many of those countries in getting students to graduate from high school, and is about average in overall academic achievement, a report concludes.

Those are some of the findings released last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its annual report comparing K-12 schooling in 32 industrialized countries.

According to the report, "Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2002," only 74 percent of students of the typical age of high school graduation in the United States finished high school in 2000, while 97 percent did in Hungary and 94...