{"id":20600,"date":"2013-11-08T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=20600"},"modified":"2013-11-08T13:01:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:01:57","slug":"what-floridas-graduation-rates-say-about-opportunity-in-our-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/11\/08\/what-floridas-graduation-rates-say-about-opportunity-in-our-state\/","title":{"rendered":"What Florida\u2019s Graduation Rates Say About Opportunity In Our State"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_20601\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"National trends: The Opportunity Index measures factors that contribute to quality of life, like graduation rates and access to early learning.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2013-11-08-at-12.44.37-PM.png\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20601\" alt=\"National trends: The Opportunity Index measures factors that contribute to quality of life, like graduation rates and access to early learning.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2013-11-08-at-12.44.37-PM-300x198.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2013-11-08-at-12.44.37-PM-300x198.png 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2013-11-08-at-12.44.37-PM-620x409.png 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2013-11-08-at-12.44.37-PM.png 705w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">OpportunityIndex.org \/ OpportunityNation.org<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">National trends: The Opportunity Index measures factors that contribute to quality of life, like graduation rates and access to early learning.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Florida doesn\u2019t offer as much opportunity to its young people as other states do.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s according to new research from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opportunitynation.org\/pages\/who-we-are\">Opportunity Nation<\/a>. The bipartisan organization compiles an index of community characteristics to measure how people&#8217;s zip codes affect their quality of life.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/opportunityindex.org\/methods-sources\/\">index includes<\/a> things like access to early learning, violent crime rates and graduation rates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a nation we\u2019re fixated on unemployment, and of course it\u2019s important. But the real core issues of opportunity have been going on for much more than simply this recession,\u201d said Mark Edwards, executive director of Opportunity Nation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the measures of opportunity is the percentage of young adults in your community that graduate from high school\u2014we know when that number is low, communities don\u2019t do well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards was in Florida for a Grad Nation summit on the national dropout crisis. Ultimately, Edwards told the crowd of educators, he wants to see people vote on issues of opportunity\u2014not unemployment.<\/p>\n<p>Florida ranks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/web\/laus\/laumstrk.htm\">22<sup>nd<\/sup>\u00a0 in the country for unemployment<\/a>. But with other factors, we <a href=\"http:\/\/opportunityindex.org\/#4.00\/34.694\/-96.736\/-\/Florida\">rank 40<sup>th<\/sup> for opportunity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Our less-than-desirable high school graduation and higher education rates harmed our ranking\u2014though our access to preschool was better than the national average.<\/p>\n<p>You can see how opportunity in your zip code measures up to state and national averages at <a href=\"http:\/\/opportunityindex.org\/#4.00\/34.694\/-96.736\/-\/Florida\">OpportunityIndex.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida doesn\u2019t offer as much opportunity to its young people as other states do. That\u2019s according to new research from Opportunity Nation. The bipartisan organization compiles an index of community characteristics to measure how people&#8217;s zip codes affect their quality of life. The index includes things like access to early learning, violent crime rates and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[205],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20603,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600\/revisions\/20603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}