In the past, trying to compare two states’ graduation rates was like trying to compare apples to kumquats. But in the last decade, high school graduation rates have improved significantly across the country—a monumental success attributed in part to state and national leaders prioritizing quality, comparable data about which students actually graduated and which fell through the cracks.
This report examines the current practices of nine states and lays out the continuing work that can be done by state and national leaders to improve the quality of graduation rate data and build trust that the cohort graduation rate is a reliable measure of student outcomes and provides a path forward to support individual students.
Read steps that states should take to keep kids from falling through the cracks in Sealing the Cracks: Using Graduation Data, Policy, and Practice to Keep All Kids on Track.
Sealing the Cracks is a collaboration between the Chalkboard Project and the Data Quality Campaign.
