The national graduation rate reached 81.4 percent in 2013, a record high, and its improvement is largely due to increased graduation rates among low-income, African-American and Latino-American students.

The annual "Building a Grad Nation" report, commissioned by Alliance for Excellent Education, America's Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, documents the success of high school students, and it details progress students have made in meeting the GradNation's goal of a national on-time graduation rate of 90 percent by 2020.

The sixth annual update of its kind, "2015 Building a Grad Nation" report documented high school dropout challenges; graduation rates among disenfranchised students; the quest to meeting the 90 percent goal; and offers a comprehensive look at how geographical areas contribute to progress. For example, six states collectively educate more than 70 percent of the nation's Hispanic/Latino students. Of those six, only three have graduation rates above the national subgroup average of 75.2 percent. For New York, the graduation rate of Latino students is almost 20 percent lower the national average for all students.

The 90 percent challenge isn't quite as menacing as it may seem, however. According to the report, the nation will need just 310,000 more graduates in the Class of 2020 than in the Class of 2013. The attainable goal can certainly be reached if the nation redoubles its efforts to graduate low-income, minority and special education students and continue driving progress in big states and large school districts.

California and Texas account for more than half of the growing Hispanic/Latino high school student population and one-fifth of all students in the nation's public schools. California's graduation rate has improved by 4.4 percentage points from 2011 to 2013. Also, Texas is nearing the 90 percent goal, but its growth has been stalled at 88 percent over the past two years.

Nationally, Latino students improved 4.2 percentage points from 2011 to 2013. Also, percentage points increased 3.7 percentage points for African-Americans during the same time span. The numbers can partially be attributed to a decrease in the number of "dropout factories," which are school with low graduations rates. It can also be attributed to instances of proper use of state funding.

Twenty-two states made gains of 2 to 3.9 percent, and 10 states increased their graduation rates by four percentage points or more. However, 10 states gained less than one percentage point or worse within the past three years. This means despite improvement, an unacceptably low number of non-white, low-income, English-language learners and special education students are graduating.

Low-income students, who are a majority in America's public school, are 15 percentage points behind their more affluent peers. Nationally, underserved Hispanic/Latino and African-American students have been nearing the graduation rate of their white peers thanks to renewed resources and guidance. Nonetheless, Hispanic/Latino and African-American graduation rates (75.2 percent and 70.7 percent, respectively) are still lower than rates for White (86.6 percent) and Asian (88.7) students.

Some recommendations offered by the report include expanding the use of early warning indicators so educators can intervene. Also, they suggest that the state eradicate zero-tolerance discipline, make state funding more equitable, establish a standard diplomas and increase the use of consistent and comparable data that holds states accountable for graduation rates.