The U.S. Census Bureau has released detailed information about how far Americans get in the education pipeline—and where it begins to leak.
According to the report, a high school diploma remains the most common endpoint of American education. Of 200 million Americans ages 25 and older in 2010, 87 percent had earned at least a high school diploma or its equivalent, up from 84 percent in 2000. Of the 26 million adults who never finished high school, 1 percent reached 12th grade, 2 percent made it to 11th grade, and another 2 percent left after completing a General Educational Development, or GED, program.
