About three-quarters of the freshman class graduated from high school on time with a regular diploma in 2004–05.

This indicator examines the percentage of public high school students who graduate on time with a regular diploma. To do so, it uses the averaged freshman graduation rate—an estimate of the percentage of an incoming freshman class that graduates 4 years later. The averaged freshman enrollment count is the sum of the number of 8th-graders 5 years earlier, the number of 9th-graders 4 years earlier (because this is when current year seniors were freshmen), and the number of 10th-graders 3 years earlier, divided by 3. The intent of this averaging is to account for the high rate of grade retention in the freshman year, which adds 9th-grade repeaters from the previous year to the number of students in the incoming freshman class each year.

Among public high school students in the class of 2004–05, the averaged freshman graduation rate was 74.7 percent (see table 21-1). Nebraska had the highest graduation rate at 87.8 percent. Sixteen other states had rates above 80 percent: Wisconsin, Iowa, Vermont, North Dakota, Minnesota, New Jersey, Arizona, Utah, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Connecticut, Missouri, Ohio, and New Hampshire. Nevada had the lowest rate at 55.8 percent. Ten other states and the District of Columbia had graduation rates below 70 percent: Tennessee, Alabama, New Mexico, New York, Florida, Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The overall averaged freshman graduation rate among public school students increased from 71.7 percent for the class of 2000–01 to 74.7 percent for the class of 2004–05. Between these years, there was an increase in the graduation rate in 44 states and the District of Columbia; 9 states (Arizona, Hawaii, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia had an increase of greater than 5 percentage points. The graduation rate decreased in 6 states (Alaska, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, and New Mexico), with Nevada being the only state experiencing a decline of greater than 5 percentage points.