On Sept. 2, 2006, it was announced that Georgia had achieved a high school graduation rate of 70.8 percent, going above 70 percent for the first time in history. Is this an important accomplishment, and, if so, what does it mean? To better understand the interest in, and debate about, this statistic, it is important to understand what is behind the number.

In 2003, the Bureau of Business Research and Economic Development at Georgia Southern University completed a study, the Economic Impact of High-School Non-Completion. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the rate of high school non-completion in Georgia was 21.4 percent compared to the national rate of high school non-completion of 19.6 percent. The conclusions of the study were

• The direct statewide economic impact of high school non-completion is an annual cost of $17.6 billion in Georgia;
  
  
• Reducing the statewide non-completion rate to16 percent would reduce the direct impact of non-completion to only a cost of $44.6 million per year; and
  
  
• Improving high school completion rates is an essential prerequisite to insure that Georgia remains competitive in the global economy.
  
  

At a cost of $17.6 billion per year and with the state's economic future at stake, improving high school graduation rates is critical.

So does a high school graduation rate of 70.8 percent, implying a 29.2 percent non-graduation rate, mean that Georgia is actually slipping behind on this important economic development issue? It is not that easy to say. In order to understand if Georgia is doing better or worse, we first need to understand some terms, and then we need to look behind the average. First, in the Economic Impact of High School Non-Completion, to measure high school graduation the study relied on a statistic reported in the U.S. Census; the percentage of the population aged 25 and older that graduated from high school or had an equivalent level of education. This statistic includes anyone who graduated from high school or who had completed a GED. By that measure, in Georgia as of 2000, on average 21.4 percent of the population aged 25 or older did not have a high school education.

On the other hand, the 70.8 percent high school graduation rate for 2005-06 is calculated by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement. The calculation is based on the number of students who completed all of the requirements to be awarded a regular diploma, either college preparatory or vocational. To calculate the Percent Graduating with a Regular Diploma, first add those graduating with a regular diploma to all of the students who received a Special Education Diploma plus those who received a Certificate of Attendance plus those who dropped out between ninth and 12th grade. Call this the Potential Number of Students Who Could Have Graduated in 2005-06. The second step is to divide the number receiving a regular diploma by all of the students who could have potentially graduated. The Governor's Office of Student Achievement is using a narrower definition of high school completion than used in the 2003 study by Georgia Southern. Thus, the 29.2 percent non-graduation rate implied for 2005-06 is only 7.8 percent more than the 21.4 percent non-completion rate in the 2003 Georgia Study. Some of the 7.8 percent have probably achieved all of the education possible for their capabilities and some are likely to complete their high school equivalency, and so in most respects it appears that Georgia's progress toward a high school non-completion rate of 16 percent is no worse, but also no better.

Looking behind the average, there may be some grounds to say that Georgia is doing better. Map 1 shows all of the counties in Georgia from the 2003 Georgia Southern study that had high school non-completion rates higher and lower than the 21.4 percent state average. Of Georgia's 159 counties, 131 had high school non-completion rates higher than the state's average, the three lightest shades of gray. That is 82 percent of the counties had non-completion rates above the state average. This is a very skewed distribution.

For the 2005-06 high school graduation rates, the distribution looks much more normal. Map 2 shows all of the counties with graduation rates equal to the state average or above, those in the darkest shade of gray, and all those below the state average, those in the lightest shade of gray. Slightly more than half, 88, of the counties are below the average, implying a higher than average non-graduation rate. Among the best news is that of the counties in the 2003 study with very high rates of non-completion, those with 31 percent or more of the population without high school level of education, 15 had a 70.8 percent or better high school graduation rate in 2006.

But when one looks at the under-performing half, the counties with lower than the state average graduation rate, some disturbing commonalities among the poorer performing counties can be noted. Of the 88 counties with below average high school graduations rates in 2005-06, 79 of those were among the counties with higher than average non-completion rates in the 2003 study. The 79 counties are overwhelmingly rural, low-income counties. Second, six of the nine counties with very high levels of high school completion in 2003 that show up in 2005-06 with below the state average graduation rate are in the metropolitan counties of Chatham, Glynn, Richmond, Muscogee, Bibb and Dekalb. While these counties have high per capita incomes and high levels of education, they also have core populations in the inter-city areas that are low-income and have low levels of educational attainment.

So is Georgia doing better or worse? One may argue Georgia is running very hard just to stay in the same place. While it is an important accomplishment to have achieved an all-time high graduation rate, it appears that poorer rural counties and the metropolitan schools have been left behind.