For the first time, the percentage of young black adults who had earned a high school diploma equaled that of young whites last year, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau. And for the second consecutive year, the percentage of young women who had earned high school and bachelor's degrees surpassed that of young men. The Census Bureau issues a report every two years on Americans' levels of education. The bureau considers those figures statistically equal.
Blacks still lag behind whites when it comes to college degrees, however.
Women surpassed men in educational attainment for the first time in 1996. The figures for men were 86 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the 1960s and 1970s, women were going to college but not necessarily finishing. Hispanics had the lowest levels of educational attainment of any group tracked as of last year, the report says. 1998 Editorial Projects in Education Vol.