According to the National Center for Education Statistics, New Mexico posted the nation’s lowest high school graduation rate for the most recently available data (Excluding Washington D.C.). The state’s graduation rate of 76.9 percent was nearly 9 percent lower than the national average, despite an improvement from 2019.

Despite the state continuing to perform poorly in this metric, there may be some hope for the future of its education system; the pupil to teacher ratio (in public schools) improved to its lowest figure since 2015. Although, it is still some ways off of the leading states in terms of graduation rate. When compared with West Virginia, which posted the nation’s highest high school graduation rate, the difference is stark.

Given the importance of this metric, as outlined by the Hun School of Princeton’s article on the student-teacher ratio, it would not be surprising to see New Mexico improve its graduation rate further if this metric continues to improve as well.

Data and graphs in this report can be generated by visiting Data-Z.org

Eric Piatek is a Data Research Intern at Truth In Accounting