The Schott Foundation for Public Education is a proud organizing partner of the GRAD Partnership.

The GRAD Partnership’s latest report, Educating America: Progress and Challenges in Providing All Students with the Education Needed for Adult Success, is the first in-depth analysis of the pandemic’s impact on high school graduation rates across the nation, including at the state and district levels. The report finds that national averages obscure disparities in post-pandemic educational recovery, and provides the strongest evidence to date regarding the impacts of key state and district policies and actions during the pandemic on high school graduation rates.

The steady growth in national graduation rates over the past two decades has been primarily driven by groups of historically underserved, with increases among Black, Hispanic, and Native American students all outpacing those of White students over the same period. But the pandemic years (2020-2022) had a profound impact on the pace at which equity gaps in the graduation rate were closing. For example, over the three years before the pandemic, Black students’ graduation rate was increasing by just under a percentage point per year; during the pandemic years, that growth rate was cut in half.

The analysis also uncovers geographic disparities in the pandemic’s impact on educational attainment: Where a student attended school during the peak pandemic years impacted the extent to which the pandemic slowed down educational attainments.

These and many other important findings underscore the importance of looking beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and centering equity in our efforts to ensure all students are supported on their path to adult success. Explore the report here.