Published: June 7, 2007
What It Takes to Graduate for the Class of 2007
In recent years, there has been a growing chorus of concern about the state of American high schools. Bill Gates has called them "obsolete." Governors across the nation have put high school reform on their policy agendas. Time Magazine ran an April 2006 cover story, entitled "Dropout Nation," discussing problems related to high school graduation rates. In its plan for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration calls for mandatory state testing in additional high school grades.
To provide context for understanding high school graduation rates and the high school reform debate more generally, the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center collected data on 16 state policy indicators in four categories related to graduation: coursetaking requirements for obtaining a standard diploma, state high school exit exams, high school completion credentials offered by each state, and the age at which students can legally leave school. This online brief updates data reported in the 2006 inaugural edition of Diplomas Count .
Indicators for all 50 states and the District of Columbia were obtained from the EPE Research Center's annual state policy survey, conducted in fall 2006, and from a number of other sources including the Denver-based Education Commission of the States, the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, and government agencies. The results indicate that policies related to graduation vary significantly from state to state and that, overall, policies have not changed dramatically since last year. However, given the strong momentum behind high school reform, further policy changes can be expected...
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