Dive Brief:
- Nearly 90% of Nebraska's high school seniors graduated this past spring, an increase over the previous year, which had a graduation rate of 88.5%.
- The graduation rate has been on a steady upswing since 2011, the year the federal government mandated the state report four-year graduation rates, when it was at 86.1%.
- The state's six-year graduation rate also surpassed its goals, hitting 91.1% in 2014.
Dive Insight:
Graduation rates have long been touted as an indicator of a state's ability to educate and prepare youth. In fact, last spring, the U.S Department of Education mandated that Mississippi restructure its school rating system after finding that the state did not give enough weight to graduation rates.
The downside, however, of focusing too highly on graduation rates is it creates a "fast-food" culture of schooling where churning students out becomes protocol. Whether or not a student can succeed once they leave high school is not factored into simple graduation rate statistics.