Beehive State Education Coverage, Driven by Data
Education News & Data
Local education reporting from every corner of Utah, grounded in Utah Department of Education data.
Utah's special education graduation rate climbed from 69.4% to 77% since 2017, narrowing the gap with the state average, but nearly one in four SpEd students still don't graduate in four years.
Utah's economically disadvantaged students miss school at 1.45 times the state rate, and the gap has barely budged in three years of available data.
Utah's Native American graduation rate crossed 80% for the first time in 2025, reaching 80.1%, but the volatile trajectory and 9.7-point gap to the state average tell a more complex story.
Pacific Islander students miss school at more than double the rate of white peers, a 25-point gap that Utah's attendance campaigns have not specifically addressed.
Carbon District in Utah's coal country has seen its graduation rate plummet 13.2 points since 2018, the steepest decline of any school district in the state.
Every student group in Utah improved on chronic absence except English learners, whose gap with the state average widened to 12.4 points.
Eight of Utah's ten reported student subgroups reached all-time high graduation rates in 2025, with the largest gains concentrated among the groups that started furthest behind.
Utah's English learners improved graduation rates by 12.1 points since 2017, the fastest gain of any group, still trailing the state average by 10 points.
Granite District's graduation rates span 97% at Skyline to 73% at Granger, seven miles apart. The gap is widening as overall district numbers improve.
While most Utah districts remain stuck above pre-COVID absence levels, Washington District in St. George has posted three straight years of improvement.
Uintah District's chronic absenteeism rate surged to 50.9% in 2025, making it the only traditional district in Utah where most students are missing school.
Nearly half of Logan City District students are chronically absent, a rate that has more than tripled since 2017 and now surpasses the district's pandemic high.
Black students in Utah improved their graduation rate from 73.1% to 83.9% since 2017, narrowing the White-Black gap from 15.2 to 8.2 percentage points.
Ogden City District's chronic absenteeism rate rose to 40% in 2025, erasing gains and leaving the district 13 points above its pre-COVID baseline.
Kindergarten has the highest chronic absenteeism rate of any grade in Utah at 30%, six points above the state average, raising questions about the state's half-day funding model.
