Wow, here’s the spending per state vs. graduation rate.
I don’t recall exact numbers, but I’d guess in 1972, when I graduated, that graduation rates were in excess of 95%. I know of only a handful of cases where people didn’t graduate. Several were so badly injured in race riots they dropped out of school. A couple of girls got pregnant and graduated later. (This was when you were expected to deliver the child and put it up for adoption. But, as I recall, the families raised the babies. Maybe we should go back to the 1950’s as Obama suggested.)
In the 1950s black families were still largely intact. Black fathers were heads of houses as a general rule.