Howard County Reports Graduation Rate for Class of 2025

January 28th, 2026

The Maryland State Department of Education on Jan. 27 released graduation and dropout rates for the Class of 2025. The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) Class of 2025 achieved a graduation rate of 91.3%, 4.9 percentage points higher than the State average of 86.4%. Both HCPSS and state graduation rates saw a slight decrease over the Class of 2024 rates: 93.5% and 87.6%, respectively. The HCPSS Class of 2025 dropout rate was 4.95%, an increase over the 2024 dropout rate of 3.60%. State dropout rates also increased to 9.9% from 8.3% in 2024.

While HCPSS students continue to graduate from high school within four years at high rates accompanied by relatively low dropout rates, disparities in both graduation and dropout rates among some student groups persist. Namely, Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students, as well as students who were categorized as economically disadvantaged, students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), and multilingual learners. These groups had lower four-year graduation rates than their peers from 2021 through 2025. Except for students with IEPs, these same student groups also had higher dropout rates than their peers.

Additional details on graduation and dropout rates for HCPSS and other Maryland school systems and schools can be found online.