Although Utah's high school graduates outnumber the national average, the number of teenagers making it to graduation day is falling, and a new report says districts aren't outlining improvement plans or requirements for college readiness.

However, details in Education Week's "Diplomas Count 2009," and the numbers used to calculate the results, are being disputed by the Utah State Office of Education.

"There really is very little that is accurate in their report," said Brenda Hales, associate state superintendent of student achievement and school success. She said education officials in Utah have notified the publication and are working to get the correct graduation rates represented. The report, Hales said, is based on approximations, which include students who have fallen through the cracks and leaves out those who move to another district.

"Utah public schools care about and track every public school student," Hales said. "We care very much about graduation rates. It is our top priority."

According to the report being released today, Utah graduates 72.2 percent of high school students. The national average reported is 69.2 percent. Hales said actual numbers indicate that 78.6 percent graduate in Utah. The state's numbers show an increase of one-tenth of a percentage point over last year's state-reported data, while the national report outlines a more than 6 percent decline during the 10 years from the class of 1996 to the class of 2006.

For the first time in the report's 10 years of publication, the national data revealed a slight downturn for the class of 2006, with high schools graduating fewer students than in years before.

Three out of every 10 students in the country's public schools still fail to finish high school with a diploma, as stated in the report. That amounts to 1.3 million lost from the graduation pipeline every year, or almost 7,200 students lost each day. The report also points out that there is no firm consensus among states, schools and policy makers on what it means to be ready for post-secondary education or how to measure college readiness.

"The nation is failing to reach a level necessary to put the United States on a solid footing in a competitive global market," said Christopher B. Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which is part of the nonprofit that publishes Education Week. "However, the longer-term trajectory of change for the country's graduation rates does offer some reason to be cautiously optimistic."