About 1,700 American high schools are “dropout factories,” according to data from the Department of Education. That’s 12 percent of U.S. secondary schools, more than one in ten. The data was analyzed by Johns Hopkins University and reported by the Associated Press.

According to the analysis, “dropout factories” are schools where 40 percent or more of the freshman class fails to make it to the senior year. The analysis covered a three-year data set.

Although transferring out of a school district accounted for some of the missing students, most were actually dropouts, one of the researchers, Bob Balfanz, said.

Metropolitan areas and Southern and Southwestern rural areas suffer with the most dropout-ridden high schools, and most of the schools had large percentages of minority students.

Utah is the only state with no dropout factories. Florida and South Carolina have the most.

According to the AP report, only 70 percent of American students graduate with a regular diploma on time. Black and Hispanic students graduate at a rate of 50 percent.

For more on the subject of education and its missing dimension, read Education With Vision.