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While 29 states raised their graduation rates since 2001, some states have lost ground and overall progress is still too slow to meet President Obama's goal of 90 percent graduation rate by 2020, according to a new report entitled “Building a Grad Nation."
Why students drop out
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Being able to read in third grade is an early indicator of whether a student will stay in school. |
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In the first half of the decade, at least one out of every four public high school students and almost 40 percent of minority students (defined as African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians) did not successfully graduate with their class. In 2008, the high school graduation rate was about 75 percent, a three-point increase from 2001.
Students can lose interest in school early, according to education experts. Studies show that you can tell who is most at risk for dropping out from third grade reading scores. Half of all low-income fourth-graders who could not read on grade level were put on a “drop out” track, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
While graduation rates declined in Arizona, Utah and Nevada, researchers pointed to factors such as a population boom that led to overcrowded schools where struggling students slipped through the cracks. In Nevada, there was a 341 percent increase in the English language learner population, a shortage of quality teachers in high-poverty areas and a labor market that attracted young adults to fields such as hospitality, construction and landscaping that didn’t require high school diplomas.
What makes a good school?
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Some schools make staying in school a requirement to get a driver's license. |
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The "Building a Grad Nation" researchers looked at places where the graduation rate improved to see what was working.
Tennessee and West Virginia passed laws that required 15- to 18-year-old students to be enrolled and making progress in school in order to have a driver’s license, encouraging students to finish their diploma.
Graduation coaches in Georgia helped guide students who were on the verge of dropping out. Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama developed early warning systems that flag students who are struggling in elementary and middle school.
New York City broke giant high schools up into smaller academies, giving students more individual attention, and Chicago emphasized charter schools that have more freedom to build creative programs such as business, technology or the arts.
The small town of Richmond, Ind., was outraged when its one high school was named a dropout factory in 2007 and held a public forum to figure out what to do. The town worked with parents and local leaders to create tutoring programs for struggling students, focused on transition periods such as elementary to middle school and middle to high school, changed the schedule to include longer periods and increase the likelihood of establishing teacher/student relationships, and partnered with local colleges to offer multiple pathways to graduation that enabled older students to complete graduation requirements outside high school.
Now the graduation rate at Richmond High School is more than 80 percent -- up from 53 in 2006 -- and more than 75 percent of students attend college.
A ‘Civic Marshall Plan’ to rebuild America's schools
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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell started America's Promise Alliance, an organization that published a report on America's schools and proposes a way to fix them. |
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Researchers hope that identifying what works can help struggling communities come up with a plan of action. America's Promise Alliance, the organization started by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife that published the report, has called for a Civic Marshall Plan to fix the system.
Just as the Marshall Plan of the 1940s rebuilt the war-torn countries of Europe after World War II, the Civic Marshall Plan would "mobilize America to end the high school dropout crisis and prepare young people for college and success in the 21st century."
Success would mean that 90 percent of current third graders graduate high school in 2020, which would put America back at the top of the list of the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
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Joplin was able to rise from the ashes because of help from everyone. And I am eternally grateful to anyone who made that possible.
