The Large Racial Gap in High School Graduation Rates Is Slowly Eroding

Filed in Racial Gap, Research & Studies on December 28, 2015

New data from the U.S. Department of Education show that for students of all races, the high school graduation rate has reached an all-time high. For the 2013-14 academic year, 82 percent of all eligible students graduated from high school. This is the fourth consecutive year that high school graduation rates have increased.

When we break the data down by race, we see that the Black student high school graduation rate in 2013-14 was 72.5 percent. This was up from 67 percent in the 2010-11 academic year. For Whites, the high school graduation rate in 2013-14 was 87.2 percent. This is nearly 15 percentage points higher than the rate for Blacks.

However, since the 2010-11 academic year the Black-White gap in high school graduation rates has declined from 17 percentage points to 14.8 percentage points.