Low-income, minority students lag but gaining

WASHINGTON — Despite rising national graduation rates, low-income and minority students continue to lag behind their peers in fifinishing high school, according to a study released Wednesday.

While the national graduation rate for the year 2015 was 83.2 percent, it was only 77.8 percent for Hispanic students and 74.6 for black students, said the report by Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University. The report represented an analysis of federal data released in December.

On the bright side, those students are catching up faster than their peers. Graduation rates have increased 7.6 percentage points for black students and 6.8 percentage points for Latino students since 2011, compared to 3 percent to 4 percent for white students, said Jennifer DePaoli, a researcher with Civic Enter- prises and the lead author of the report. The groups behind the report have been leading the GradNation campaign that advocates for a graduation rate of 90 percent by 2020.

“When we look at the big picture, this is good news. We have the highest graduation rates that this country has ever seen,” said DePaoli. But for low-income and minority students and students with disabilities, more help is needed. States “are getting stuck with getting certain students across the fifinish line,” she said.

New Mexico was the worst performing state, with a statewide graduation rate of 68.6 percent, the only state below the 70 percent mark.

Iowa was the fifirst state to reach a 90 percent graduation rate. Other high-achieving states were Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky.

The graduation rate among students with disabilities was 64.6 percent, a difffffffffffference of nearly 20 percentage points from the overall rate.