Only a fourth of Americans graduated from high school a century ago – dismal record on which to argue for fixing schools back to the good old days. The chart above is taken from a PDF report on American High School Graduation. The lowest line on the chart shows that college graduation never got above about 31%. The top line reflects that high school graduation climbed to and then hovered (for decades) around 75%.
In the final decade of the chart, the Internet appeared and the knowledge that measures what it means to be educated became available on the Internet in an open, free virtual cloud. My guess is that a chart for the 21st century will have climbing lines that will show how knowledge started flowing to students from the Internet – and that the lines will go into the 90th percentile. Attending a school at a certain level and getting a certificate at a school may become less and less relevant. Educators are working right now on how to rethink education to take advantage of these hugh changes, as in this new book, to be published soon: Turning Education Right Side Up.
