States With Large Racial Disparities in High School Completion Rates

Nationwide in 2000, 85.5 percent of white adults over the age of 25 had completed high school. This was 13.3 percentage points higher than the rate for blacks, which stood at 72.3 percent.

But the nationwide racial gap in high school completions varies to a large degree among the 50 states. In 47 of the 50 states of the union, whites are more likely to have a high school diploma than blacks. But in North Dakota, Montana, and West Virginia, blacks are more likely to have completed high school than whites.

In the 47 states in which whites are more likely to have completed high school than blacks, the differences at times are quite large. By far the largest racial shortfall is in the District of Columbia. There, nearly 97.5 percent of all white adults have a high school diploma compared to 70.4 percent of black adults.

Among the states, the largest differences are generally in the South. The black-white gap in high school completions is 18.5 percentage points in both Florida and Mississippi. In Louisiana and South Carolina, the racial gap is significantly higher than the national average. But in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, the racial gap in high school completions is below the national average.

The largest racial gap in high school completions in the northern states occurs in Wisconsin. New York and Illinois are also significantly higher than the average. The racial gap is very small in Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, and South Dakota.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.