U.S. education officials in February had some modestly good news to announce: the nation’s high school graduation rate had inched up to a historic high. This month came even more encouraging news: Those rates have improved for all types of students, as the achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has narrowed. This progress is not mere happenstance; it is a product of reforms that have brought rigor and accountability to American public education. We hope that reality will not be lost on Congress as it debates the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
U.S. education officials in February had some modestly good news to announce: the nation’s high school graduation rate had inched up to a historic high. This month came even more encouraging news: Those rates have improved for all types of students, as the achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has narrowed. This progress is not mere happenstance; it is a product of reforms that have brought rigor and accountability to American public education. We hope that reality will not be lost on Congress as it debates the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
According to the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, graduation rates for black and Hispanic students increased by nearly 4 percentage points from 2011 to 2013, outpacing the growth for all students in the nation. They weren’t alone as increases were reported for all other subgroups of students: white, Asian, low-income, English language learners, young people with disabilities and American Indians. The gap in achievement between white students and black and Hispanic students shrunk for those three years from 15.3 percent in 2011 to 13.4 percent in 2013. The overall graduation rate for the class of 2013 was placed at 81 percent, up from 79 percent three years ago when states started calculating rates in a uniform way.
Of course, that’s still not good enough, but the promising gains showed how it’s possible to give targeted help to students who need it while still lifting overall performance — thus preparing more students for careers or college.
No Child Left Behind insisted on annual testing and demanded that school systems track test scores of differentiated student groups. Until then, it was easy for school districts to ignore and hide the failures of minority or economically- disadvantaged students. Even more important is that after the law went into effect in 2002, school districts were required to actually do something — improve instruction, provide additional help, get better teachers — to address the struggles of these students. There is still much work to be done in improving educational opportunities for every student. All the more reason that the nation must continue to measure performance.
Congress hopes to rewrite No Child Left Behind this year; a House bill seems stalled, but Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate education panel, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., ranking committee member, are working on a bipartisan bill. By all means, they should correct any overly punitive or unhelpful provisions of the law, but they should not abandon this fundamental principle: Schools need to know whether students are learning and do something about it when they aren’t.
— Washington Post