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The district’s graduation rate is improving, but leaders say it is still far too low. They know that the traditional way of calculating the rate—which has produced a figure of 88 percent— doesn’t capture the true dropout picture. A 2005 analysis, performed for the Indianapolis Star by a Johns Hopkins University researcher, concluded that only 39 percent of the freshmen who enter Indianapolis high schools leave four years later with a diploma—one of the nation’s worst graduation rates for an urban district.