A huge study was recently released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) called the “America’s High School Graduates“ (PDF).

Within the report, the high school transcript study analyzes transcripts from public and private high school grads so that they can inform the public on things like our nation’s average GPA.

The results? It seems that high school students are taking more rigorous course loads and earning higher grade point averages.  Overall GPAs increased from 2.68 in 1990 to 3.00 in 2009 with increasing course loads.

Some other main points from the study include:

In 2009, graduates earned over three credits more than their 1990 counterparts, or about 420 additional hours of instruction during their high school careers.

A greater percentage of 2009 graduates complete more challenging curriculum levels than 1990 or 2005 graduates.

Nearly two-thirds of graduates who attended a rigorous curriculum took algebra I before high school.

While some academic GPAs have increased for subjects like English, science and mathematics seem to be struggling a bit more.  David Driscoll, chair of the National Assessment Governing Boards says,  according to Reuters,  ”Rigor in high school is closely linked to successess afterwood, and this study confrirms that we need higher secondary standards across the board…In particular, we need strong requirements in math and science.”

What can we take from this? We should happy about the improvement, but there is still a lot of room for our high schools to achieve more.  The better our high school students do, the more opportunities they will have with their higher education.

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