Despite the constantly gloomy rhetoric about the state of America’s schools, U.S. students are steadily improving by at least one metric — for the first time, the nation is making enough progress in graduating from high school to reach the goal of 90 percent graduation by 2020, according to a new report to be released Monday.
“This is our fourth annual update,” said John Bridgeland, an author of the report, titled “Building a Grad Nation.” “Previously we’ve been able to focus on school districts making double-digit gains but we always have to pivot and say the pace of progress is too slow. Now, we have hopeful news.”