Gov. Bev Perdue and State Superintendent June Atkinson today announced that North Carolina’s public high schools graduate students at a higher rate than the nation overall and showed the second highest improvement in the graduation rate since 1998 among all states, according to the 2011 Diplomas Count report issued today by the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center, publisher of Education Week.
Education Week is considered to be the nation’s newspaper of record for pre-collegiate education. Overall, the Diplomas Count researchers calculated North Carolina’s graduation rate as 72.8 percent. The national rate was 71.7 percent.
North Carolina’s graduation rate tied for 25th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., marking the first time that the state’s position has moved above the national average on this annual ranking.
For more information, visit www.ncpublicschools.org and select the appropriate link under “News.”