What are the average high school graduation rates for public and private schools in the US in 2025?
Executive summary
The best available national figures indicate a U.S. public-school four‑year adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR) near 87 percent in recent national reporting and summaries used through 2024–25, while private schools show much higher completion on the alternate measure reported by NCES—about 96 percent of 12th‑graders enrolled in private schools graduated in 2020–21—although that private‑school figure is not the same cohort measure as the public ACGR and so is not strictly directly comparable [1] [2] [3].
1. What the headline numbers are and why they matter
Federal NCES reporting and widely‑cited aggregators place the national public high‑school ACGR in the high‑80s—commonly reported around 87 percent—which reflects the percentage of a 9th‑grade cohort that earned a regular diploma within four years [1] [3]. NCES also reports a very high completion figure for students enrolled in private schools when using a different measure: roughly 96 percent of private‑school 12th‑graders completed high school in 2020–21 [1] [2]. These headline numbers shape conversations about college readiness, workforce pipelines and K–12 policy, but comparing them requires caution because they are derived from different denominators and counting rules [1].
2. Measurement matters: ACGR versus percentage of 12th‑graders
The NCES ACGR—used for public schools—is an adjusted cohort measure that follows students from 9th grade and accounts for transfers, deaths and other cohort adjustments; that is the 87 percent figure cited for public schools [1]. By contrast, NCES’s private‑school figure comes from a different survey approach that reports the percent of 12th‑graders who complete that year, not a 4‑year cohort metric; the private figure of about 96 percent therefore cannot be plugged in as an exact apples‑to‑apples comparison with the public ACGR [1] [2] [4].
3. What multiple sources say about 2025 specifically
Analyses and aggregators updated through 2024–25 reiterate the public‑school ACGR around 87 percent as the national average cited for 2025 reporting, and trend‑forecasts expect the total number of high‑school graduates to peak in 2025 even as cohort composition shifts [3] [5] [6]. WICHE’s “Knocking at the College Door” projection emphasises a peak in graduate counts (about 3.9 million) in 2025 but does not change measurement of the ACGR itself; it does, however, underline why policymakers are focused on both rates and absolute graduate numbers in 2025 [5] [6].
4. Why private rates tend to look higher—and the reporting gap
Multiple observers note private schools generally report higher graduation rates, driven by factors like selective admission, smaller class sizes and different student populations, but the government does not compile private ACGRs in the same way it does for public schools, producing a reporting gap that makes precise national private‑school cohort rates harder to produce from federal data alone [7] [1]. NCES’s alternative private‑school completion metric (the 12th‑grader completion percentage) shows very high outcomes—around 96 percent in the 2020–21 snapshot—but analysts caution that difference in metrics limits direct comparability [1] [2].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
The balanced conclusion from the available reporting is: public high‑school graduation (ACGR) nationally is approximately 87 percent in the recent period used through 2024–25, while private schools report substantially higher completion on the 12th‑grader measure—about 96 percent in 2020–21—but a true national private‑school ACGR comparable to the public cohort measure is not provided in federal datasets and therefore cannot be stated with the same methodological confidence from the sources at hand [1] [2] [3]. Where context matters—policy, funding, equity—readers should keep the measurement differences front and center.