More than five years after the covid-19 pandemic began, the havoc it wreaked on American students and schools is alarmingly clear by nearly every measure. But there is one glaring exception: high school graduation rates.

Even as test scores cratered, public school enrollments plummeted, and chronic absenteeism — the percentage of students missing at least one-tenth of the school year — nearly doubled, graduation rates continued to rise steadily, as they have for decades. To look at the graduation statistics, it’s as though the pandemic never happened.

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