Of the 1.23 million high school students who will fail to graduate this year, minority students are the most at risk, according to new data recently released by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (EPE).

While nationally, 71 percent of ninth-graders make it to graduation four years later, the figure drops for Hispanic, Black and Native American students — 58, 55, and 51 percent respectively.

The new data highlighted in "Diplomas Count 2008: School to College: Can State P-16 Councils Ease the Transition?" details graduation information for every U.S. district and state, along with other new information, including the estimated number of students in the 2008 class who dropped out before graduating.

EPE, which publishes pre-collegiate education newspaper Education Week, aims to help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education.

Its new study found the new data using enrollment and graduation rates as opposed to drop-out rates from various U.S. states. The information was based upon 2005 numbers because those numbers were the most up-to-date information available.

Christopher B. Swanson, director of the EPE Research Center, said in a conference call Wednesday that another way to think about the 1.23 million struggling students was to think of the number as one student lost from the high school-to-college pipeline every 13 seconds.

During the call, Swanson shared that minority males are most at risk for not graduating from high school. Poorly-funded school systems and community issues were among some of the reasons cited for low graduation rates.

The project, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, revealed in Diplomas Count 2008  that between 2001 and 2005 the nation’s graduation rate increased by 2.6 percentage points revealing a slow, but steady improvement.