Female Students Cross 90% for the First Time as Pennsylvania's Gender Gap Holds Steady

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Female students in Pennsylvania crossed the 90% graduation rate threshold for the first time in 2024, reaching 90.1%. Male students graduated at 86.0%, producing a gender gap of 4.0 percentage points, almost exactly what it was in 2011.

The stability is the story. Over 13 years in which Pennsylvania's overall rate climbed 5.4 points, its racial gaps halved, and its poverty gap narrowed by 55%, the gender gap barely moved. It was 3.8 points in 2011. It peaked at 5.3 in 2021. It returned to 4.0 in 2024.

Both groups improved

Female students gained 5.5 percentage points over the period, from 84.6% to 90.1%. Male students gained 5.3 points, from 80.7% to 86.0%. The near-identical improvement rates explain the static gap: both groups are riding the same tide upward at the same pace.

This contrasts with the racial gap, where Black students improved 15.2 points while white students improved 3.3, producing convergence. And it contrasts with the poverty gap, where economically disadvantaged students improved 11.6 points while all students improved 5.4. In both those cases, the lower-performing group improved faster, closing the gap. With gender, the groups are improving in lockstep.

The 90% milestone

The female 90% crossing is symbolically significant. It means nine out of ten female students who enter ninth grade in Pennsylvania now graduate in four years. The male rate of 86.0% means roughly 14 out of every 100 male students do not.

The state publishes one cohort size for each class rather than a separate cohort for each subgroup, so how many individual male students that four-point gap represents is not something Pennsylvania's published graduation file can answer.

The pandemic years

The gap did move once, and briefly. It reached 5.3 points for the class of 2021, the widest in the series and the only year above 5.1 points, then narrowed in each of the next three years back to 4.0. The widening did not persist.

Where the gap is wider

The statewide four-point gap masks wide variation between districts. Of the 575 districts that published both a female and a male rate for the class of 2024, 56 posted a gap wider than 10 points.

Among the 20 districts with the largest graduating cohorts, though, the gap sits closer to the state figure. The median there is 6.4 points, and only Allentown City^↗ at 12.9 points and Hazleton Area^↗ at 13.3 points clear 10. Philadelphia City^↗, which had the state's largest cohort at 9,446 students, graduated 80.8% of its female students and 71.8% of its male students, a gap of 9.0 points.

Male students out-graduated female students in 128 of those 575 districts, and the pattern tracks cohort size: it happened in 60 of the 192 districts with the smallest cohorts, against 26 of the 191 largest. That gradient is what small-cohort volatility looks like rather than a systematic reversal.

Pennsylvania reports gender and race as separate subgroups rather than crossing them, so the published file cannot say how Black or Hispanic male students graduate specifically. What it does show for the class of 2024 is an 18.2-point spread between the highest published subgroup rate, 94.2% for Asian students, and the lowest, 76.0% for students receiving special education services.

Graduation rates come from the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the published 2011-2024 graduation file used in this analysis.

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

Hazleton Area - EdTribune PA - Pennsylvania Education Data

Female Students Cross 90% for the First Time as Pennsylvania's Gender Gap Holds Steady

Both groups improved

The 90% milestone

The pandemic years

Where the gap is wider