Who Graduates? First the good news: In 2012, for the first time ever, one- third of the nations 25- to 29-year- olds have completed at least a bachelors degree. These across-the- board increases have occurred despite dramatic immigration-driven changes in the racial and ethnic composition of college-age young adults, a trend that had led some experts to expect a decline in educational attainment. College completion is now at record levels among key demographic groups: men and women; blacks, whites and Hispanics; and foreign- born and native-born Americans. Released: November 5, college September 28, recent-immigrant-arrivals-since-1970/ May 21, 2013 Updating to 2013 (latest available) data Graduation Rate Hits High, But Some Groups Lag 29 May 2015 The on-time graduation rates in the nations public high schools have hit historic highs. The U.S. Department of Education reports that 81 percent of the class of 2013 graduated within four years, as tabulated by the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR). The ACGR, which states use to fulfill accountability requirements under the No Child Left Behind law, has climbed 2 percentage points since 2011, when the Education Department first started requiring states to calculate and report graduation rates using this method. The gap between the highest- and lowest-performing jurisdictions was 28 percentage points in At one end of the scale was Iowa, with a graduation rate of 90 percent; at the other end, 62 percent of the class of 2013 graduated on time in the District of Columbia. Students with disabilities, the focus of Diplomas Count 2015, have a 62 percent on-time graduation rate, which is 19 percentage points lower than the overall national rate.ACGR: The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate is the number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for the graduating class. For any given cohort, students who are entering grade 9 for the first time form a cohort that is subsequently adjusted by adding any students who transfer into the cohort later during the next three years and subtracting any students who transfer out, emigrates to another country, or dies during that same period. Our universities seem to do well https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/world-university-rankings results-announced Times Higher Education World University Rankings Times Higher Education World University Rankings , But internationally US reading and STEM scores on P rogram for I nternational S tudent A ssessment EDUCATION WEEK Published in Print: January 12, 2012, as U.S. Education Pressured by International Comparisons By Sean CavanaghSean Cavanagh Concern over American students' middling scores on high- profile tests vies with caution about cultural and political factors that shape school improvement . EDUCATION WEEK Published in Print: January 12, 2012, as U.S. Education Pressured by International Comparisons By Sean CavanaghSean Cavanagh Concern over American students' middling scores on high- profile tests vies with caution about cultural and political factors that shape school improvement . But wait a minute Gasp! A more accurate assessment of the performance of U.S. students would be obtained by comparing the scores of American schools with comparable poverty rates to those of other countries. Schools in the United States with less than a 10% poverty rate had a PISA score of 551. When compared to the ten countries with similar poverty numbers, that score ranked first. Country Poverty Rate PISA Score United States