San Juan District - EdTribune UT - Utah Education Data

Native American Graduation Rates Cross 80% for the First Time in Utah -- But Still Trail the State by Nearly 10 Points

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Utah's Native American four-year graduation rate crossed 80% in 2025 for the first time on record. The Class of 2025 graduated at 80.1%, up from 74.2% in 2017 -- a 5.9 percentage point gain over eight years.

The milestone is real and worth noting. But the path to get here has been anything but steady, and the 9.7-point gap between Native American students and the state average of 89.8% remains one of Utah's widest equity divides.

Volatility is the defining feature

Unlike English learners, who improved every year without exception, or Black students, whose gains were large if uneven, Native American graduation rates have zigged and zagged with alarming amplitude.

The pattern: 74.2% in 2017, up to 77% and 79.3% in the next two years. Then the COVID year of 2020 cratered the rate to 72.9% -- a 6.4-point single-year drop that erased three years of progress. Recovery brought the rate back to 78.4% in 2021, but it then drifted down again: 78.3%, 77.4%, 77.5%. Only in 2025 did it finally clear 80%.

The swings are partly statistical. Native American students make up roughly 1.3% of Utah's student population. In small cohorts, individual students can shift the rate by a point or more. But the COVID dip of 6.4 points -- the largest for any subgroup in 2020 -- suggests something beyond statistical noise. Many of Utah's Native American students attend schools in remote areas of the Navajo Nation and Ute reservations, where pandemic impacts on connectivity, health, and family stability were severe.

Three gaps, none closing fast

The 80.1% rate puts Native American students 9.7 points below the state average and 12 points below White students. Both gaps narrowed from their 2017 levels, but the trajectory has been uneven.

The gap to the state average was 12.8 points in 2017, shrank to 8.1 points in 2019, then ballooned to 15.3 points during the COVID year before slowly contracting again. In 2025, it sits at 9.7 points -- narrower than it started, but wider than it was in 2019.

The White-Native American gap follows a similar pattern: 14.1 points in 2017, a low of 10.4 in 2019, then back up to 17.8 during COVID, and 12 points in 2025.

The lesson from these trajectories is that Native American graduation rates are more fragile than other subgroups. External shocks hit harder, and recovery takes longer. The 2025 milestone of 80% comes six years after the rate first approached that level, interrupted by a crash that required half a decade to recover from.

Where Native American students attend school

Utah's Native American student population is concentrated in a handful of areas. San Juan District^↗, which covers the Navajo Nation portion of southeastern Utah, is the primary school system for many families. Several charter and alternative schools also serve Native American communities.

San Juan's 2025 graduation rate of 90.3% suggests that not all of the gap is driven by the districts where Native American students are concentrated. State-level subgroup data doesn't reveal which districts or schools are pulling the rate down versus lifting it up. Without district-level subgroup breakdowns -- which Utah doesn't report -- it's impossible to pinpoint where the gap is widest and where targeted intervention might have the most impact.

The 20% who don't graduate

Crossing 80% means roughly one in five Native American students still doesn't graduate within four years. Some of those students may earn diplomas later, through extended programs or GED pathways. Utah doesn't publish five-year or six-year rates that would reveal how many eventually complete.

For many Native American families, the four-year timeline itself can be a barrier. Students on reservations may face long commutes, limited course offerings, family obligations that require extended absences, and cultural disconnects with a curriculum designed far from their communities. A student who takes five years to graduate because of these circumstances isn't failing -- the system is failing to accommodate their reality.

What 80.1% represents

The 80% milestone matters symbolically. It crosses a threshold that, for many policymakers, separates "crisis" territory from "challenge" territory. Below 80%, the dropout rate -- one in five or worse -- dominates the conversation. Above 80%, the conversation can shift to acceleration and gap closure.

But for the families and communities behind the number, 80.1% is thin ice. A single bad year could drop it back below the line. The volatility in the data suggests this rate hasn't been earned through the kind of steady, systemic improvement that makes it durable.

The test of whether 80% is a real milestone or a statistical moment will come in the next two to three years. If the rate holds above 80% and continues climbing, it will represent a genuine shift. If it dips back to 77% or 78%, the milestone will look more like a data point than a turning point.

Data source

Data from the Utah State Board of Education. Four-year adjusted cohort graduation rates, 2017-2025.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Carbon District's Freefall: From 94.9% to 81.7% in Seven Years, the Largest Decline Among Utah School Districts

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2018, Carbon District^↗ graduated 94.9% of its students. The small district centered on Price, a coal town of about 8,000 people in eastern Utah, was comfortably above the state average. It was the kind of graduation rate that doesn't generate headlines.

Seven years later, Carbon graduates 81.7%. The 13.2 percentage point decline is the largest of any Utah school district in the data, steeper than any other rural district's struggles and steeper than any urban district's over the same span.

Year by year, the unraveling

The decline didn't happen all at once. It came in waves, with brief pauses that might have looked like stabilization before the next drop arrived.

From 94.9% in 2018, the rate fell to 92.2% in 2019, then plunged 5.5 points to 86.7% in 2020. A brief plateau around 86-87% in 2020-2022 offered some hope. Then came 2023: another 5.7-point drop to 81.5%, followed by a further slide to 78.5% in 2024, the district's nadir.

The 2025 rebound to 81.7%, a 3.2-point gain, is the first real improvement in years. But even this bounce only brings the rate back to where it was in 2023, when the number already felt alarming.

Coal country context

Carbon County's economy was built on coal, and the coal industry has been in structural decline for more than a decade. The county's population has been falling. Younger families have been leaving for jobs on the Wasatch Front, 100 miles west. The students who remain come disproportionately from families facing economic instability.

None of this makes the graduation rate decline inevitable. Other rural Utah districts facing similar pressures have maintained or improved their rates. Sevier District^↗ in central Utah climbed from 83.5% to 92.2%. Iron District^↗ in Cedar City sits at 93.3%. San Juan District^↗, which serves the Navajo Nation, reaches 90.3%.

Carbon's 81.7% rate places it near the bottom of its rural peer group, trailing even Duchesne District^↗ (81.6%) in the Uinta Basin, another energy-dependent community facing similar demographic shifts.

From above average to below

Perhaps the most telling detail is Carbon's trajectory relative to the state. In 2018, the district was 7.9 points above the state average. By 2025, it trails by 8.1 points, a swing of 16 points in relative position. The state improved; Carbon collapsed.

The district went from graduating at a rate that would have been considered excellent in most states to one that leaves nearly one in five students without a diploma within four years.

A single high school district

Carbon is essentially a one-high-school district. Carbon High serves the entire area, and its 2025 rate of 82% is nearly identical to the district figure. There's no within-district variation to analyze, no east-side/west-side divide. The decline is happening to one community, in one school, with one set of students.

That simplicity is both a challenge and an opportunity. There's no complexity to hide behind. If the graduation rate is falling, everyone in Price knows it, and whatever changes are needed can be implemented without the bureaucratic layers of a larger system.

What's at stake

For a small town, graduation rates carry outsized significance. Each student who doesn't earn a diploma limits their own prospects and reduces the talent pool in a community that's already losing population. Carbon County can't afford to lose one in five of its young people to non-completion on top of the out-migration it's already experiencing.

The 2025 rebound is a reason for cautious optimism. But one good year after six bad ones doesn't constitute a recovery. Carbon District needs to string together the kind of steady, incremental improvement that the state as a whole has achieved, and it needs to do it in a community where the economic headwinds keep blowing.

Data source

Data from the Utah State Board of Education. Four-year adjusted cohort graduation rates, 2018-2025.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.