How does Mississippi really compare when it comes to graduation rates?
“Contrary to what many may think, Mississippi is not at the bottom of all data sets when it comes to high school graduation rates. According to a new report by Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, during the 2014-15 school year, the difference between the graduation rates of black and white students in the state was one of the smallest in the country. Between the 2010-11 and 2014-15 school years, Mississippi’s progress on narrowing the black/white graduation gap placed it among the nation’s top ten states. But that’s not to say the state isn’t dealing with persistent challenges in getting its students to graduate. What follows is a look at how Mississippi is doing compared with the rest of the country, based on data from the 2017 ‘Building a Grad Nation’ report. The report uses the adjusted cohort graduation rate, calculated by determining the percentage of students in a cohort who graduate within four years, while accounting for students who leave the cohort or join during those four years. A cohort is the number of first-time ninth graders in a school year.”