Closing The Gap: How Georgia Plans To Produce More High School Graduates — Part 1

Johnson supports and guides her students, but she also helps them with coursework when they get stuck. Here, she’s helping Alexis Darks with a math assignment.

BITA HONARVAR / For WABE

Earning a high school diploma boosts a person’s earning potential and decreases that person’s chances of living in poverty. Georgia is making progress in that area.

Last spring, the state’s high school graduation rate reached an all-time high of 81.6 percent. The rate includes students who started a Georgia high school in the fall of 2014 and graduated in the spring of 2018. It also includes students who transferred in. It doesn’t include students who take more time to graduate or those who’ve moved to other states and can’t be tracked. However, the number shows almost one in five Georgia high school students didn’t graduate on time last spring.