High School Dropout Rate – Massachusetts

Dropout rate lowest in a decade, March 3, 2010, Boston Globe: “The high school dropout rate in Massachusetts dipped below 3 percent last school year for the first time in a decade, according to a state report released yesterday. The rate of 2.9 percent was a half percentage point lower than the previous year. However, the rate still represents 8,585 students in grades 9-12 who decided to give up on school – a number that state and local educators say is still too high. Mitchell Chester, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said that ‘troubling’ gaps still exist between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds, but that every major student group experienced improvements in rates…”