Noting that graduation rates for American high schools have reached 80 percent, PBS NewsHour looks at what has helped drive those rates up.

In the Fall 2013 issue of Education Next, Richard J. Murnane and Stephen L. Hoffman wrote about how high school graduation rates had begun to rise between 2000 and 2010 after 30 years of stagnation.  They wrote that improved K‒8 education, decreased teen birth rates, and lower incarceration rates all may have contributed to the rise in graduation rates after 2000.

—Education Next