Public education doesn’t get very many “here’s an overlooked success” stories these days. Particularly in Pennsylvania. A pension crisis, angst over how the state distributes money among districts and how districts raise their own money (through property taxes), an emotional debate over school safety, and the state’s disastrous affinity for more and more standardized testing have created a climate in which public education is just assumed to be broken.

But there are indeed overlooked or unappreciated successes to be found.

It’s a common refrain to hear: far too many high school students never get their degree.

On a national scale that definitely remains true. The high school dropout rate in America stands at about 7 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

But Pennsylvania’s 2017 statewide average of 1.72 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, is much lower.

And the further you drill down into the data, the better the news gets for places like Butler County, where Butler Senior High School, at 1.08 percent, has the highest dropout rate of any school in the county.

That’s not a knock on BSHS, it’s a pat on the back for every school district — including Butler — in the county.

To be sure, there is much more to talk about when it comes to issues like dropout and graduation rates at our public secondary schools.

Is this positive progress due to federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind (a George W. Bush-era action) and regulations enacted by former President Barack Obama’s that standardized how districts calculate dropout rates and required school officials to intervene at buildings with low graduation rates?

Is it due to statewide efforts to increase state funding for K-12 education — a push that has resulted in $2 billion more for schools since 2015?

What about local school boards’ efforts to revitalize their districts’ curriculum and reimagine the way technology and educational tends like STEM and STEAM can reinvigorate classroom time?

The simple answer is: yes.

It’s likely that all of these things have had a positive impact on how our students learn, what they learn, and how many of them graduate.

There is also an ever-expanding cache of scientific data on student performance and achievement from which school officials can draw.

For instance, a study published earlier this year by the University of Georgia explored factors that may lead to students dropping out of school. Researchers found that the reasons dropouts leave school are (predictably) complex, but zeroed in on two behaviors — aggression and weak study skills — that contribute to the problem. Notably, researchers also found that both those behaviors manifest early in a student’s school career.

The conclusion: districts should be able to identify these students and help them succeed, but they need the resources and support to do so.

None of this means that difficult conversations about the shortcomings of our education system aren’t warranted. As mentioned above, there are plenty of things for people to be concerned about when it comes to public education.

But an unrelenting drumbeat of negativism has its own consequences — like a more than 70 percent drop in teaching certificates issued by the state Department of Education over the last five years. That drop is certainly not solely due to negative news about education. But did negativism contribute? Absolutely.

Critical thinking and criticism are necessary to improve any venture. But we must celebrate the successes of public education too. Otherwise we risk losing sight of the ultimate goal, which is better schools for our children.