When you look at our national high school graduation rate map, it’s impossible to miss how low graduation rates are in the Deep South. These states don’t have the worst graduation rates in the country. That dubious distinction belongs to Oregon, New Mexico and Nevada.
But still, taken together, Southern states are a long stretch of low-performing districts, with very few bright spots. Alabama is the only state with any districts whose graduation rates are above 95 percent, and it’s only got six of them. (Most of those are small and hard to see. More on that in a moment.)
