States Inch Ahead on Reporting Graduation Data

More than eight years after the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law, some states still aren’t complying with its requirement that they report graduation rates for subgroups of students, such as English-language learners or economically disadvantaged children.

But officials from some of those states now say they’ve gained the capacity to report those numbers and will be ready when the federal government requires graduation rates for subgroups of students to be used to judge adequate yearly progress under the law in the 2011-12 school year.

In the 2007-08 school year, the most recent for which state-by-state data reported to the federal government are available, Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, and the District of Columbia reported a graduation rate only for “all students,” not for any subgroups, in their consolidated state performance reports to the...