For four years, high school students grind away at assignments, projects and tests — all to get to graduation day.
The average state graduation rate across 45 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. was about 87.4% for the 2024-2025 academic year, up 1.23% from the year prior across those same jurisdictions. Graduation rates for these states and D.C. ranged from an average of about 79% to 94%, according to data from each state’s department of education website.
This rate represents the proportion of students who graduated four years after starting high school. It’s an indicator of how well a school serves all of its students. Recent data was unavailable to U.S. News by Aug. 18 for North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma,Rhode Island and Texas.
[Read: How to Recover from a High School Sophomore Slump]
The high schools most successfully getting students to graduation day in four years aren’t limited to a specific region or state. Even so, some states stand out: 15 had an average high school graduation rate of at least 90%.
Kentucky boasted the highest graduation rates based on available data, graduating an average of about 93.6% of students in 2025. West Virginia and Virginia were slightly lower at 92.8% and 92.7%, respectively.
[Consider these 11 Things to Consider When Choosing a High School]
At the other end of the spectrum, some states had significantly lower averages. In D.C., the average high school four-year graduation rate was 78.7% for 2024-2025, the lowest reported. Alaska is the only other state among the 45 states included in this report with a graduation rate under 80%.
Nevada’s graduation rate jumped by 4.66 percentage points from the prior year — the most of any state in this year’s listing — while Maryland had the biggest decline, 1.37 percentage points, among the six that notched drops.
See the complete Best High Schools rankings.
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See High School Graduation Rates By State originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 08/19/26: This article was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
