Future High School Graduation Classes Will Be More Diverse

By Caralee Adams on January 14, 2013 10:44 AM

A new report projects that, by the 2019-20 school year, 45 percent of public high school graduates in the United States will be nonwhite, up by more than 7 percent over the class of 2009 and driven by a rapid increase in the number of Hispanics completing high school.

White public high school graduates will drop by 228,000 and black non-Hispanics by 41,000, while Hispanic graduates will increase by 197,000 and the number of Asians/Pacific Islanders graduating will rise by 49,000, according to the 8th edition of "Knocking at the College Door: Projections of High School Graduates", recently released by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, based in Denver. The trend will likely translate into pressure on policymakers to remedy the achievement gap among traditionally underrepresented populations.