The population density of N.Dakota, which has the highest grad rate, is 9.31 persons/sq mile. When looking at this, one must take into consideration that most communities are rural. Some school houses are one room with K-12 students all in the same room. Also, I wonder what the student/teacher ratio is in smaller communities, and parent involvement. The poplation of Fargo, the largest populated city, is less that 100,000. I also wonder about the number of minority student/families verses the majority.
In comparison, Florida, with the lowest grad rate, and a 303.16 persons/sq mile. What a huge contrast. The largest city is Jacksonville, with a population of 748,000. Florida has a large community of hispanic immigrants who have values and standards not of the ruling majority of the US. One must then question, are educators in Florida trained to work with the various mainorities? and what is the minority/majority ratio? When there is a larger population, the communitites are vastly different, so wouldn't this in turn effect graduation rates?
I was just interested in the numbers because I knew the population density of ND is smaller than most states, and wondered how this reflected upon grad rates.
