President Barack Obama announced Monday that high school graduation rates rose to an all-time record high of 83.2 percent in the 2014-2015 school year, with all ethnic groups showing gains.
Obama announced these new numbers during a visit to Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C., which had a 100 percent graduation rate among its students, according to NBC News. Washington had the highest improvement in graduation rates (7 percent), although its rate of 68.5 percent of students graduating on time still lags behind most other states.
Nationally, white students had a graduation rate of 87.6 percent, CNN reported, while black students graduated at a rate of 74.6 percent and Hispanics at 77.8 percent. American Indian and Native Alaskan students had a 71.6 percent graduation rate.
The Wall Street Journal said Iowa had the highest graduation rate of any state with 90.8 percent; New Jersey (89.7 percent) and Alabama (89.3 percent) were close behind.
“These are critical gains, and we know our work isn’t done yet, not when far too many students still don’t walk across the stage to receive their high-school diploma, not when achievement and opportunity gaps remain too often drawn along lines of race and class,” Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said of the numbers, the WSJ reported.
“We live in a global economy and when you graduate you’re no longer going to be competing just with somebody here in D.C. for a great job,” Obama cautioned the students, according to CNN. “The best jobs are going to go to the people that are the best educated whether in India or China or anywhere in the world.”
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