Texas 5th in high school grad rate

Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas ranks very high in its share of students graduating from high school. In a confer

call with campaign supporters,Abbott said Feb. 19: “This is one of

facts that you are able to disarm about. Listen, Texas has one of top five states in

nation for school graduation rate. More kids are graduating from high school, more kids are graduating from college than ever before.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that in fast-growing Texas, more students graduate from high school and college than before.

We focused on whether Texas still ranks among states with the highest graduation rates.

By phone, Abbott spokesman John Wittman told us Abbott relied on a chart showing stateby-state graduation rates in 201516. Accordingto the chart, posted by the National Center for Education Statistics, Iowa led that year with a 91.3 percent high school graduation rate. The chart says New Jersey ran second, with a 90.1 percent rate, followed by West Virginia (89.8 percent) and Nebraska (89.3 percent).

Texas landed fifth, the chart says, with a rate of 89.1 percent, just ahead of Missouri (89 percent). The nation’s high school graduation rate was 84.1 percent, the chart says.

We noticed that Texas didn’t rank as highly as some other years.

At the Texas Education Agency, though, spokeswoman Lauren Callahan urged us to notice that the Texas graduation rate has consistently escalated. The statewide graduation rate in 2014-15 was 89 percent, the agency says, compared with 88.3 percent in 2013-14, 88 percent in 2012-13 and 84.3 percent in 2009-10.

From past fact-checks, we recognized another method used