WASHINGTON – High schools are coming under pressure from the federal government to improve the nation’s dismal dropout rate – one in four students.

Schools and states now must track and lift the graduation rates for all students, including minorities and those with disabilities, under rules issued Tuesday by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

“In this country today, half of our minority students do not get out of high school on time. That’s outrageous,” Spellings said in Columbia, S.C.

A school might have a high graduation rate but still have a low rate for black or Hispanic students or for those with disabilities. Making schools responsible for progress in every group of students puts pressure on schools to improve.

The new rules are an attempt to extend the No Child Left Behind education law to the high school grades, and they come in the waning days of the Bush administration, which made the law a signature domestic achievement.

Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said his department would withhold comment on these latest recommendations until officials could review and digest the rulings.

He said the department was supportive of a uniform reporting method for tracking graduation rates and was in agreement with the standards called for by the National Governors Association.

“These rules were just released at 12:30 p.m. today, and we haven’t had time to review them,” Connerty-Marin said Tuesday. “I can tell you we do support the NGA’s formula for reporting; we just don’t know if that is the one they want. We have to look at these rules before we can comment on what implementation will mean. These things are extensive, and we have to look at the fine points.”

Spellings told The Associated Press in an interview that “No Child Left Behind is largely about grades three through eight – there’s not a lot of power in the law as it relates to high school.”

“We haven’t really tackled high school accountability, and this is a giant step toward doing that,” Spellings said.

She announced the rules Tuesday in South Carolina, where the graduation rate mirrors the national average of 73 percent. South Carolina has set a goal of 88 percent.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools have to meet annual targets for improving graduation rates.

But states are allowed to set their own targets for improvement. And more than half the states have targets that don’t make schools get better, according to a study last week by The Education Trust, a children’s advocacy group. In some states, all that’s required is that schools don’t do worse.

South Carolina, despite graduating more students, only requires schools to do as well or better than they did the year before.

The federal government cannot force states to set more ambitious goals. But it can make states uncomfortable by holding schools accountable – publicly – for failing to graduate more students.

“The power of the spotlight is what’s important about No Child Left Behind,” Spellings said.

The new rules do two things to shine the spotlight on school dropouts:

. States must track dropouts, along with graduates and transfers, using the same reporting system. They currently use a hodgepodge of methods that makes it hard to compare states, and the National Governors Association has recommended a uniform tracking system.

. Schools, starting with the 2012 school year, must meet those targets for minority groups and kids with disabilities, as well as for the overall student population, to satisfy the yearly progress requirements of No Child Left Behind. Schools that don’t meet yearly goals for every group of students face consequences, such as having to pay for tutoring or replace principals.

Schools will be judged on whether students finish high school with a regular diploma in four years. The secretary of education will consider exceptions for those who take five or six years to graduate, such as students who are learning English or those with disabilities.

But Spellings wants the pressure on schools to graduate students in four years.

BDN writer Walter Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.