A new report projects that by 2019-20, 45 percent of public high school graduates in the United States will be nonwhite, up by more than 7 percent over the class of 2009 and driven by a rapid increase in the number of Hispanic students completing high school.
The report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, in Denver, also anticipates a decline in the overall number of high school graduates. That number topped 3.4 million in 2010-11, after growing for 15 years, then began a decline that is expected to stabilize in 2013-14 at 3.2 to 3.3 million graduates.
