Arizona’s high-school graduation rate went up a few points last year — but still leaves the state at 44th in national rankings.
In the 2014-15 school year, 77.4 percent of the state’s high-schoolers graduated, compared with 75.7 percent the year before.
State Department of Education spokesman Charles Tack says it’s an improvement but not where the state wants to be.
“We all would hope for 100 percent, I know that’s ambitious," he said. "But in addition to improving that total rate, there are some populations of students across our state that are struggling more than others.”
Tack says rural and Native American students in Arizona are most at risk of not graduating high school.
“We look at particularly our Native American students (who) are graduating at about a 66 percent rate, so we’re talking about 1 in 3 Native American students that are not graduating.”
Recently, state law removed a graduation requirement of passing the AIMS standardized test, retroactively granting high school diplomas to thousands of students.
Read the report here to see more rankings.
