Report: U.S. Only Industrialized Nation Where Youth Less Likely Than Parents To Graduate High School

October 24, 2008 7:32 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A startling new report reveals that the United States is the only industrialized nation where today's young people are less likely than their parents to graduate high school.

The study done by an education advocacy organization found that nationally one in four high school students don't graduate on time and the rate worsens to more than one in three African-American and Latino students.

"At a time when most middle-class jobs require more than just a high school education, many states seem willing to accept remarkably high dropout rates," Anna Habash, policy analyst at The Education Trust and author of the report "Counting on Graduation," said in a statement.

And the low high school graduation rates impact more than the lives of the affected students.

"It's as if policymakers haven't gotten the message that knowledge and skills matter more than ever, not just for young people, but for their states' economies, and even for our national security."

There has been a great deal of focus on the federal No Child Left Behind law that requires all states to set benchmarks for graduating high school students. However, the law leaves it up to states to set goals for high school graduation rates - that range from a low of 50 percent in Nevada to a high of 95 percent in Indiana - and many states set the bar low for improvement.

More than half the states have set the accountability bar so low for improving graduation rates from year-to-year that they accept any improvement.

According to the report:

For example, if the state-set minimum target were met each year:

• North Carolina's high schools would not achieve the state's current overall graduation-rate goal until the year 2103. It would take an additional 95 years for the state's African-American students and 180 years for its Latino students to reach the same goal.

• African-American students in Maryland would reach their state's goal in the year 3117.

• In Delaware, New Mexico and South Carolina, no student group will ever actually have to reach the state goal as long as their current graduation rate is sustained each year.

"A number of states have set the bar so low that they are basically telling parents, 'We'll meet our goals when your grandchildren's grandchildren are ready to graduate,'" Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust, said in a statement Thursday.

The report also found a few states working harder to boost graduation rates.

They include Georgia, which switched from its previous low expectations to set a new goal to achieve 100 percent graduation rates for every student group by 2014. It has hired people to identify students at risk and work with them to help them graduate.

Mississippi's legislature has opened an office of dropout prevention within the state department of education and set a new goal to cut its dropout rate in half over the next five years.