Excelsior College Mathematics for Everyday Dropout Rates Questions

How many states had graduation rates below 75% during the 2011-2012 school year?

What was the graduation rate for Asian American students in 2011-2012?

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Dropout Rate
Are new policies needed to keep more teens in school?
T
he U.S. public high school graduation rate has risen
to 80 percent, but more than 700,000 teens still drop
out each year. Experts say dropouts create an economic and societal burden because they are ill-
prepared to participate in an increasingly sophisticated global
economy. The dropout rate is highly uneven, with students who
are poor, disabled or still learning English more likely to leave
school. much of the problem can be traced to factors such as
poverty, family instability and dangerous neighborhoods. But many
critics also fault schools for failing to engage students and Congress
for resisting adequate funding for schools. At the same time, conservatives and the Obama administration are locked in a debate
about the proper role of washington in shaping school policy. The
federal government aims to increase the graduation rate to 90 per-
Empty school chairs displayed at the National Mall by
the College Board on June 20, 2012, represent the
thousands of public high school students nationwide
who drop out every school day. The 80 percent U.S.
public school graduation rate means that each year
one in five students — more than 700,000 — drop out.
cent in coming years, but critics say meeting that goal demands
major educational reforms and the money to pay for them.
I
N
THIS REPORT
S
I
D
E
CQ Researcher • June 13, 2014 • www.cqresearcher.com
Volume 24, Number 22 • Pages 505-528
THE ISSUES ………………..507
BACKGROUND …………….514
CHRONOLOGY …………….515
CURRENT SITUATION ……..520
AT ISSUE……………………521
OUTLOOK ………………….523
RECIPIENT Of SOCIETY Of PROfESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AwARD fOR
EXCELLENCE ◆ AmERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILvER GAvEL AwARD
BIBLIOGRAPHY …………….526
THE NEXT STEP …………..527
DROPOUT RATE
THE ISSUES
507
• Is societal change needed
for graduation rates to rise?
• Are successful local
dropout programs viable
nationwide?
• Are federal efforts to raise
graduation rates working?
SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS
508
509
Graduation Rate Peaks
in 2012
National public high school
graduation rates increased by
nearly 10 percent from 1997
to 2012.
511
Why We Dropped Out
former students cite street
violence, family health issues
and lack of support as reasons
for dropping out.
BACKGROUND
514
514
Early Origins
Public school enrollment exploded after children began
attending to learn trades.
“Waste We Cannot Afford”
President Kennedy warned
about the dropout problem.
517
Seeking Solutions
Congress in 1994 required
states to create education
standards.
518
Research and Action
The No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 has shaped education policy for a decade.
512
Blacks, Hispanics Lag
Behind Whites, Asians
American Indian, black and
Hispanic graduation rates
fell far below the national
average.
515
Chronology
Key events since 1940.
516
GED Gets a Modern
Makeover
Some say the venerable
high school equivalency test
is on borrowed time.
520
522
Fewer “Dropout Factories”
The number of poorly performing schools fell by a
third from 2002 to 2012.
522
Concern Over Standards
Educators are divided on
whether to raise or lower
graduation requirements.
OUTLOOK
523
Striving for 90 Percent
A national graduation rate of
90 percent would add nearly
$11 billion to the economy.
Cover: Getty Images/Alex Wong
506
CQ Researcher
MANAGING EDITOR: Thomas J. Billitteri
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Haggerty, maryann.haggerty@sagepub.com,
Kathy Koch, kathy.koch@sagepub.com
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An Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc.
VICE PRESIDENT AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR,
HIGHER EDUCATION GROUP:
michele Sordi
CURRENT SITUATION
Washington Gridlock
Congressional inaction has
stalled both parties’ versions of
education reform legislation.
27 States Meet or Exceed
National Graduation Rate
more than half the states
equaled or exceeded the national average of 80 percent.
June 13, 2014
Volume 24, Number 22
521
At Issue:
Should all states raise the high
school dropout age to 18?
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
525
For More Information
Organizations to contact.
526
Bibliography
Selected sources used.
527
The Next Step
Additional articles.
527
Citing CQ Researcher
Sample bibliography formats.
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Dropout Rate
BY ROBERT KIENER
THE ISSUES
T
www.cqresearcher.com
Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor/Melania Stetson Freeman
scores of research reports
about the issue. “There are
no jobs. That’s why dropping
he nation has achieved
out is a crisis.”
a “profound mileThe consequences are not
stone,” Secretary of
just economic. “Our commuEducation Arne Duncan told
nities created public schools
a washington audience in April
to develop citizens and to sus— the national on-time pubtain our democracy,” wrote
lic high school graduation
Diane Ravitch, a New York
rate is at its highest level ever.
University education professor
“As a country we owe a debt
and public education advoof gratitude to the teachers,
cate. “. . . when public edustudents and families whose
cation is in danger, democrahard work has helped us reach
cy is jeopardized. we cannot
an 80 percent graduation rate,”
afford that risk.” 4
he said. 1
The dropout crisis is esHowever, the assembled
pecially acute among blacks
educators, researchers, poliand Hispanics. “we still have
cy advocates and high
many school districts where
school students also heard
it looks like apartheid in
words of caution. “we canAmerica,”
said Daniel J. Losen,
Brandon Campbell, 20, studies online at the Boston
not coast when we have big
director
of
the Center for
Re-engagement Center on Jan. 8, 2013, for courses he
needed to get his high school diploma. Dropout rates
hills to climb,” said Alma PowCivil Rights Remedies at the
are highest among students who are poor, disabled or
ell, chairwoman of America’s
University of California, Los
still learning English, and those who are black or
Promise Alliance, an educaAngeles. 5
Hispanic. In today’s demanding job market, dropouts
tion foundation started by her
Although some of the nacould be doomed to what Education Secretary
husband, retired Gen. Colin
tion’s
weakest high schools
Arne Duncan calls continued “poverty and misery.”
L. Powell, former chairman
have improved or have been
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 2
closed over the last several
As Duncan explained, the 80 percent den on the rest of the nation because years, there are still some 1,300 “dropout
graduation rate translates into one in a technical and global economy has factories,” defined as schools that gradfive students dropping out — 718,000 little room for workers without high uate fewer than 60 percent of their
high school students a year. 3 That’s school diplomas, many say. The search students. 6
nearly 4,000 students every school day. for solutions to the U.S. dropout probRon Haskins, co-director of the
Even though the U.S. graduation rate lem, an issue that has vexed educa- Center on Children and families at the
has been improving for more than a tors, administrators and politicians for Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning
decade, rising from 71.7 percent in decades, raises questions about how washington, D.C., think tank, says, “You
2000, it’s still one of the lowest in the to determine what works and how to cannot separate the problems of schools
developed world. And it is still short pay for it. It also fuels debate about and society. You have to work on both
of the long-held government goal of the proper role of the federal gov- at the same time, and we are. But the
ernment in education, traditionally guid- gap between the poor and the rich is
90 percent by 2020.
Overwhelingly, dropout rates are ed at the local and state levels.
increasing.”
“Twenty years ago a high school
highest among those who are poor,
Alma Powell and Duncan were feadisabled or still learning English. Today’s dropout could find a job that paid a tured speakers at a day-long discusdropouts, many of whom may be un- living wage. Today that’s impossible,” sion of the report “Building a Grademployable in an ever-more-demanding says Russell w. Rumberger, a profes- Nation 2014,” an annual update on
job market, could be doomed to what sor of education at the University of dropout prevention issued by Powell’s
Duncan called continued “poverty and California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and group together with several other edumisery.” They will also become an in- director of the California Dropout Re- cation policy organizations. 7 (See graphcreasing economic and societal bur- search Project, which has published ics, p. 508 and 509.) That report and
June 13, 2014
507
DROPOUT RATE
27 States Meet or Exceed National Graduation Rate
Public high school graduation rates in 27 states equaled or exceeded
the national average of 80 percent in 2011-12. Ranking highest was
Iowa (89 percent), followed by Nebraska, Texas, Vermont and
Wisconsin (88 percent). The District of Columbia was lowest, at
59 percent, followed by Nevada (63 percent).
Public High School Graduation Rates, 2011-12
Wash.
Ore.
N.D.
Mont.
Idaho
N.H.
Minn.
Vt.
Wyo.
Neb.
Utah
Colo.
Kan.
Ky.
Ariz.
Okla.
N.M.
Miss.
Texas
La.
W.Va.
Tenn.
Ark.
Ga.
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
Va.
Md.
N.C.
S.C.
Ala.
R.I.
Conn.
N.J.
Del.
Pa.
Ind. Ohio
Mo.
Calif.
Mass.
N.Y.
Mich.
Iowa
Ill.
Nev.
Maine
Wis.
S.D.
D.C.
Below 65%
65-74.9%
75-84.9%
85 and above
Data
unavailable
Source: Marie Stetser and Robert Stillwell, “Public High School Four-Year On-Time
Graduation Rates and Event Dropout Rates: School Years 2010-11 and 2011-12,”
U.S. Department of Education and National Center for Education Statistics, April
2014, pp. 9-10, http://tinyurl.com/km2k6jp
others presented statistics that underline the differences in graduation
rates:
• Low-income students are woefully behind their better-off peers. for
example, in minnesota just 59 percent
of low-income students graduated, compared with 87 percent of their wealthier peers. In many states, roughly onethird of low-income students did not
graduate in 2012. 8
• English-language learners, at 59 percent, and special-education students,
at 61 percent, had below-average graduation rates. 9
• Black students graduated at a
69 percent rate and Hispanics at 73 percent, compared with whites at 86 percent and Asian-Americans at 88 percent. In some cities the statistics were
even more dismal. for example, only
59 percent of students in the largely
508
CQ Researcher
black washington, D.C., public school
system graduated. 10
• Graduation rates also varied
widely among states; while 93 percent
of vermont’s students graduated, only
59 percent of Nevada’s did. 11
Dropouts cost the nation in a variety of ways. Over a lifetime, a typical
high school dropout earns an estimated $260,000 less than a graduate. 12
Those lower earnings cost federal and
state governments more than $50 billion annually in income tax that would
have been paid if all dropouts graduated. 13 High school dropouts live
shorter lives — by six to nine years
— than graduates and are disproportionately affected by heart disease, diabetes and obesity; 80 percent of
dropouts depend on government for
health care assistance. 14 Dropouts are
67 percent of the inmates in state pris-
ons, 56 percent of federal inmates and
69 percent of inmates in local jails. 15
The global nature of the economy
magnifies the cost of the dropout
problem, according to Robert Rothman, a senior fellow at the Alliance
for Excellent Education, a washington
education policy and advocacy group.
“Students from Baltimore and Boston
no longer compete against each other
for jobs; instead, their rivals are welleducated students from Sydney and
Singapore,” he wrote. “But as globalization has progressed, American educational progress has stagnated. . . .
Given that human capital is a prerequisite for success in the global economy, U.S. economic competitiveness is
unsustainable with poorly prepared students feeding into the workforce.” 16
Rothman cited an estimate from the
Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), which conducts economic research on industrialized countries, that
if the United States brought all students up to a minimum level of proficiency, the country would add as
much as $72 trillion to its gross domestic product over the lifetime of a
child born in 2010. 17
Even with the recent improvement
in graduation numbers, the United
States ranks 21st among 28 industrialized countries in the proportion of
youth who complete high school, according to the OECD. 18 In the 1970s,
the United States ranked first.
Experts agree that a large part of
the dropout problem can be traced to
social, economic and cultural factors
that adversely affect some students,
such as poverty, a troubled home atmosphere and dangerous neighborhoods. High dropout rates can’t necessarily be blamed on the education
system, says maria ferguson, executive director of the Center on Education Policy at George washington University. “Often they are caused by
other factors.” Until problems such as
extreme poverty and high crime are
remedied and the special needs of atrisk students are addressed, some education experts say, too many students
will drop out.
Some national and state programs,
such as one-on-one intervention and
mentoring for at-risk students, have
produced improved graduation rates.
However, many such programs are expensive and time-consuming, and experts question whether they can be
duplicated across the country.
Officials in the Obama administration, the latest in a long line to attempt to solve the high school dropout
problem, have frequently spoken out
on the issue. Indeed, in his first State
of the Union address, President Obama
declared that “dropping out of high
school is no longer an option” and
described the nation’s high dropout
rate as “a prescription for economic
decline.” 19
He has continued to discuss the
problem in subsequent speeches. In
an effort to cut the number of dropouts,
he has suggested all states raise the
legal dropout age to 18, although the
suggestion has not gained much traction. 20 Eighteen states allow students to
leave school before the age of 18. 21
(See “At Issue,” p. 521.)
However, education legislation is
stalled in Congress, despite pleas for
action on key issues. Because of political gridlock and other factors, “most
policy makers and education leaders
have little hope any of these will be
passed soon,” says ferguson.
As politicians, researchers and educators look for ways to raise the graduation rate, here are some of the questions they are asking:
Is societal change needed for
graduation rates to rise?
Poverty is the strongest predictor of
a school’s dropout rate. Students from
low-income families are five times more
likely to drop out than students from
high-income families. 22 In all but six
states, the graduation rate for low-
www.cqresearcher.com
Graduation Rate Peaks in 2012
The public high school graduation rate climbed nearly 10 percentage
points during the past 15 years to a high of 80 percent in 2011-12.
(Graduation Rate)
80%
70%
Average National Graduation Rates,
1997-2012
1997-98 1999-2000 2001-02
2003-04
2005-06
2007-08
2009-10
2011-12
Note: The methodology for reporting graduation rates was standardized nationally
in the 2010-11 academic year; earlier calculations used a slightly different
definition of a freshman class.
Sources: “Digest of Education Statistics, Table 124,” U.S. Department of Education,
National Center for Education Statistics, October 2012 (1997-2010 data),
http://tinyurl.com/jvonwls; Marie Stetser and Robert Stillwell, “Public High School
Four-Year On-Time Graduation Rates and Event Dropout Rates: School Years
2010-11 and 2011-12,” U.S. Department of Education and National Center for
Education Statistics, April 2014 (2010-12 data), http://tinyurl.com/km2k6jp
income students is below the national average. 23 Education experts say
that in many cases, especially among
minority and poor communities, sociological and cultural factors — such
as disinterested or overburdened parents, crime and safety issues — also
lead students to drop out.
Since the mid-1960s, when Congress
enacted the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) to fund schools
based on the proportion of low-income
children enrolled, educators have been
debating whether graduation rates can
improve without a corresponding improvement in poverty and related issues.
“Graduation rates may be inching
up, but there are still huge gaps between underserved students and students in richer school systems,” says
ferguson at George washington. “The
reality is that we have a ZIP codefunded public education system and
will never have a truly level playing
field.” much of U.S. school funding
comes from locally collected property and other taxes, so funding varies
widely, depending on the incomes of
families in a school’s district.
mary Clare Reim, a research assistant at the Center for Policy Innovation at the conservative Heritage foundation think tank in washington, wrote,
“Too many young students are trapped
in failing public schools simply because of where they were born. Place
of birth should not be a life sentence
to low economic mobility.” 24
ferguson says, “we have to do the
best we can to improve our lowestfunded school systems or we won’t
see real increases in graduation rates.”
Available funds should be concentrated on low-income schools, she says.
But increased funding is not always
the answer, argues martha Bruckner,
superintendent of schools in Council
Bluffs, Iowa, where nearly 70 percent
of the district’s approximately 9,000
students are from low-income families,
and graduation rates have jumped from
68 percent to 84.5 percent over the
last eight years. “Poverty is a problem,
but it’s not insurmountable,” she says.
June 13, 2014
509
Courtesy America’s Promise
DROPOUT RATE
Education Secretary Arne Duncan is upbeat about the nation’s efforts to
improve secondary education. “The progress, while incremental, indicates that
local leaders and educators are leading the way to raising standards and
achievement and driving innovation over the next few years.”
Six years ago the Council Bluffs
school district put in place a strategic
plan with the objective of “guaranteeing” every student a high school diploma. It included a range of targeted
programs that appointed “graduation
coaches” for mentoring at-risk students, such as those who became
pregnant or had poor attendance. This
one-on-one intervention made students
more accountable to their teachers and,
Bruckner says, helped them learn the
value of completing school. In addition, an attendance facilitator worked
510
CQ Researcher
with each of the district’s schools to
increase school attendance.
“we also reached out into the community and enlisted the aid of concerned parents as volunteers,” Bruckner says. “A lot of what we are doing
is instilling pride in students, and their
parents, in earning a high school
diploma. I think too many people have
used poverty as an excuse for our nation’s high dropout rates. Instead of
waiting for the government to cure
poverty, we say education is the key
to reducing poverty.”
Some educators say asking schools
to solve or even merely compensate
for societal problems may be asking
too much. “No matter how much we
improve our public schools, they alone
cannot solve the deeply rooted, systemic problems of our society,” according
to New York University’s Ravitch, who
once advocated conservative-backed reforms such as school choice but has
since become a vocal opponent of such
policies. “The failure of public policy is
not the failure of the public schools.” 25
Her 2013 book Reign of Error denounces
what she calls “the hoax of the privatization movement” — or what she sees as
an effort by school reformers to turn public education over to the private sector.
Others say that schools must find
ways to deal with the situations that
students face. “High school dropout
rates are often not the main problem
but an indicator of other problems,”
says Rumberger at UCSB. “These are
often examples of society failing kids,
not kids failing schools. The challenge
is to improve schools so they can better compensate for the inequalities or
handicaps of these at-risk students. That’s
a way to raise graduation rates.” In his
book Dropping Out: Why Students
Drop Out of High School and What Can
Be Done About It, he advocates targeting help to the poorest schools and
most vulnerable students early in elementary school, among other steps.
Bob wise, former governor of west
virginia and now president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, says the
nation cannot use economic and social problems as an excuse to avoid
trying to improve the educational system. “Certainly, low-income children
need improved health care and better
support systems, but we cannot wait
for these societal fixes to be done to
work on education,” he says. “we have
to get on with working on education.
If all we do is provide better housing
and health care for people who don’t
have an education, they will remain in
the economic straits they are in.”
“Why We Dropped Out”
High school dropouts from high-poverty areas cite a variety of reasons for leaving school, including gang
influence, street violence, boredom, family health issues and a lack of support from parents or teachers.
Researchers from the Center for Promise at Tufts University conducted group interviews last year with
more than 200 dropouts in 16 high-poverty urban communities across the country. Here are excerpts:
“Seeing my homeboy stabbed to death, multiple
deaths, having a cousin that was murdered
when I was 5, just a lot of things. I started
hanging around with the wrong people,
gang members getting into crap like . . .
just a lot of stuff.” — Sara
“I learn really hands-on and if it’s shown to me
in a really creative way then I get it right away.
But, in traditional high school you sit down and
read a book and hopefully you learn this. . . .
Once I got into high school and that’s all I was
doing, I started hating reading.” — Sharif
“I eventually dropped out just ’cause the bills
weren’t getting paid and I knew I could pay
the bills, step up. I never took on responsibility
like that before in my life.” — Aaron
“The gangs showed me love, showed me the
ropes, showed me how to get money. After that
I was like, what do I need school for?” — Carl
“Never had my mom in my life; she was always
on drugs. It was just me growing up watching
over my little brothers while she was out in the
street doing her thing. So me and my other
brothers grew up too quick, took responsibility,
we just — it was too late to go
back to school.” — Thomas
“I just didn’t like school. It wasn’t because
I’m dumb. I get sick just entering the building.
I feel like I’m in prison. It’s how the school
was set up.” — Jeff
“I got shot in my leg, and they started sending
me homework from school . . . and I was doin’
it and all of a sudden I started drinking and
I got a little bit depressed, and just tired of it,
you know, I don’t want to do it no more,
and I just quit.” — Paul
“Everybody I was around smoked weed. Everybody I was around didn’t go to school. So it
was either go to school by yourself or stay
around here and smoke with my friends.”
— Ernest
Source: “Don’t Call Them Dropouts: Understanding the Experiences of Young People who Leave High School Before Graduation,”
America’s Promise Alliance and its Center for Promise, Tufts
University, May 20, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/mpawcm7
Some point to the improvement in
graduation rates over the last decade
as evidence that the situation can improve despite poverty and in the face
www.cqresearcher.com
The teachers “weren’t sure what to do with me,
how to help me. . . . I was moving around foster
homes a lot so it’s like you didn’t get any support
anywhere. After a while I just stopped going to
class, stopped doing homework, skipped school
and got into doing drugs and things like that.”
— Denise
“Even though I was taking extra-credit classes
and doing after-school work, they didn’t give me
any of my extra credits or any credits from the
credit-recovery program. So, then I just kind of
fell off, I figured there was no point in trying.”
— Donald
“The teachers wouldn’t even acknowledge me. I
would say I’m behind, can you do this for me? . . .
A lot of teachers didn’t even know my name,
it got really bad and came to the point
where I wasn’t going to graduate.” — Arielys
“In school I was reckless because no one cared
and no one said anything. If someone was
there to push me, maybe we would have
all stayed in school.” — Vivian
“When I turned 18 I [aged out of foster care] and
became homeless and that’s where it all started.
It just went downhill. I withdrew myself
because I had nowhere to go.” — Mandy
of other socioeconomic problems.
“Poverty matters, but schools and teachers can make a lot of difference in the
face of poverty,” says frederick m. Hess,
a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative
washington think tank.
June 13, 2014
511
DROPOUT RATE
Blacks, Hispanics Lag Behind Whites, Asians
Four-Year Graduation Rates, by Race/Ethnicity, 2011-12
U.S. Total
80%
Asian-American
88%
White
86%
Hispanic
73%
Black
69%
American Indian/Alaska Native
67%
Getty Images/The Washington Post/Katherine Frey
In the 2011-12 school year, 80 percent of public high school students
graduated within four years. However, the graduation rate was
considerably lower for American Indians, blacks and Hispanics
than for whites or Asian-Americans.
Source: Marie Stetser and Robert Stillwell, “Public High School Four-Year On-Time
Graduation Rates and Event Dropout Rates: School Years 2010-11 and 2011-12,”
U.S. Department of Education and National Center for Education Statistics, April
2014, pp. 9-10, http://tinyurl.com/km2k6jp
“we lived through a powerful recession, and [graduation] rates still went
up,” says Robert Balfanz, a research
scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University, who has worked with
low-performing schools nationally,
many in poor neighborhoods. He points
to successful programs designed to
support at-risk students and says,
“Poverty is admittedly a significant driver of these low graduation rates, but
the evidence shows that things can
happen at the school level that can
modify that to some extent.”
Bruckner in Council Bluffs agrees.
“Teachers, working in tandem with
their students, parents and the local
community, can make a quantifiable
difference,” Bruckner says. “Our district is proof of that.”
Are successful local dropout programs viable nationwide?
Hundreds of programs to reduce
dropout rates have been created over
the last decade. These include bigbudget, statewide education reform
programs such as florida’s, which
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CQ Researcher
raised the state’s graduation rate 21 percent between 1999 and 2010. They
also include big-city programs such
as Children first in New York City,
where schools are graded A through
f based in part on student progress,
and the high school graduation rate
rose 42 percent in eight years; as well
as district- or local-level programs
such as those in Council Bluffs and
Darlington County, S.C., with 10,500
students. 26
while some of these programs have
shown promising results, it is still unclear whether they could be sustainable and scalable nationwide. funding can be difficult to obtain, and there
is little research on which programs
are most effective.
In Darlington County, a rural, lowincome region where 22 percent of
the population is below the national
poverty level and per capita annual
income is only $20,000, turnaround
has been dramatic. 27 In five years the
county has boosted its graduation rate
from 70 percent to 93.4 percent, the
highest in South Carolina. 28 The county’s education reforms included one-
on-one intervention for struggling students plus a dropout-prevention facilitator in each school who focuses on
at-risk students. The district also introduced a more comprehensive K-12
reading curriculum, self-directed learning at the high school level (where
students may choose from various
courses in a curriculum) and a strict
attendance policy.
“Happily, we are seeing models that
are duplicable nationwide,” says wise,
the former west virginia governor. But
there’s no magic formula that can be
applied to any high school. “You have
to look carefully at what’s happening
in a community and what each
school’s particular needs are,” he says.
for example, while one school could
use non-union staff in an intervention
program, another might be restricted
to employing only union personnel
and thus face higher costs. Also, programs can be duplicated more successfully if demographics are similar.
funding is a frequently cited problem. “These programs are inevitably costly, and many are most needed in underfunded school districts with low tax bases,”
says George washington University’s ferguson. “Teachers, mentors and tutors
cost money, and it is often difficult to
convince taxpayers to pay up.”
In Council Bluffs, Bruckner says,
dropout prevention programs are funded by a $2.5 million per year state
grant, plus a foundation grant of
$250,000, which works out to about
$300 per student. In Darlington County, Eddie Ingram, the superintendent
of schools, says that they spend
$383,000 per year on salaries for people whose primary responsibility is
dropout intervention.
Unreliability of funding is also a
problem. UCSB’s Rumberger notes that
programs featuring expensive advocates or monitors for at-risk students
are often paid by federal or state grants,
rather than from local school funds.
“what happens when that grant
money runs out, as it usually does, in
a year or two?” he asks. “Governments
and foundations need to better focus
on how these programs can be sustained in the current fiscally restrained
climate after the funding expires.”
for example, the federal government in 2010 funded the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program,
meant to help states develop literacy
programs. “Congress in its wisdom
funded the program, then a year later
eliminated it and restarted it the following year,” says Phillip Lovell, vice
president for policy and advocacy/comprehensive school reform at the Alliance for Excellent Education. “No business would ever do such a thing.” The
level of uncertainty created by washington’s gridlock “is a real impediment
to reform.”
It’s wrong to focus on short-term
costs, says wise. “we cannot not afford to transform our schools. It’s a
case of ‘pay me now or pay me later.’
If we don’t fund education now, we’ll
pay later in the form of increased health
care costs, social welfare costs, low
earnings and more.”
while programs such as Darlington
County’s might succeed in other
school systems, there is a lack of research on which dropout prevention
programs work best, says Rumberger.
“The federal government is very weak
on measuring the effectiveness, and
especially the cost effectiveness, of
many intervention programs.” Citing a
lack of research funding, he notes, “we
educators don’t do enough research
on those factors.” ferguson, too, says
a shortage of research funding prevents more schools from adopting reform programs.
But Haskins at Brookings disagrees,
noting that the federal Institute of Education Sciences “is well-funded, and
they are doing high-quality education
research, as are the schools taking part
in the federal program Investing in Innovation.” In that program, school districts and nonprofits compete for
grants to develop and test new ideas.
www.cqresearcher.com
Some education officials praise the
federal government for its role in
pressing states to agree to a standardized, uniform calculation of graduation rates. “It’s impossible to know
how you’re doing if you don’t have
good numbers,” says Lovell.
while the initial call for this statistical reform came in a 2005 report from
the nation’s governors, the federal government took the lead in the ensuing
years by making use of that method a
part of state education-accountability systems linked to federal aid. 29 Says Balfanz, at Johns Hopkins, “This reform
would have died if the federal government didn’t push it forward.”
Complaints about the lack of research aren’t new. A 2008 report from
the National Education Association
(NEA), the nation’s largest teachers
union, noted, “for at least a decade,
researchers have reported the dearth
of rigorous evaluations of the effectiveness of educational programs in
general, and of dropout prevention and
intervention programs in particular. This
makes it difficult to identify high-quality
model programs or the components
that make them effective.” 30
Says AEI’s Hess, an advocate of
local control of schools, “I’d rather that
Congress increase funding for education research instead of funding federal programs that seek to dictate how
states and local governments run their
schools.”
Are the federal government’s efforts to raise graduation rates
working?
Between 2009 and 2013, the Obama
administration distributed $5.1 billion
to states to improve academic performance at about 1,500 struggling high
schools. These School Improvement
Grants constitute the largest-ever federal aid targeted at failing schools, many
of them so-called dropout factories.
Results have been mixed, however:
Students at a third of the schools did
the same or worse than before the
funding; the others improved, but at a
rate similar to that of all U.S. students
during the same time.
“You can’t help but look at the results and be discouraged. we didn’t
spend $5 billion of taxpayer’s money
for incremental change,” said Andrew
Smarick, a former federal education
official and a partner at Bellwether
Education Partners, a massachusetts
consulting firm. 31
Education Secretary Duncan disagreed:
“The progress, while incremental, indicates that local leaders and educators
are leading the way to raising standards
and achievement and driving innovation
over the next few years.” 32
Balfanz, whose research was largely responsible for identifying the phenomenon of dropout factories and
helping to popularize the term, says
the federal money helped prove that
troubled schools could be reformed.
“we used to think these problems were
intractable,” he says. “Now we can see
some of these schools can be turned
around.” The number of dropout factories fell from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,359
in 2012. 33 (See “Current Situation,”
p. 522.)
while some applaud washington’s
funding for education programs, such
as the School Improvement Grants
and other initiatives, others claim
these programs are the latest in a
succession of actions that give washington too much say in education
policy, historically a state and local
matter. “One of the biggest questions
that will affect education policy is
how big a role do we want the federal government to have in education,” says ferguson. Debate over the
issue often splits along ideological
lines, with Republicans generally calling for a reduced federal role and
Democrats a larger one.
Critics of washington’s educationreform efforts claim that with the advent of No Child Left Behind, the federal school reform law that went into
effect in 2002, and the more recent
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513
DROPOUT RATE
Race to the Top programs, which tie
federal money to adoption of national
education standards, the federal government has taken a direct hand in
mandating education policy. Over time,
“the U.S. secretary of Education became the nation’s superintendent of
schools, telling every district and
every school what was required of
them to receive federal funding,” said
critic Ravitch at NYU. 34
Critics also note that washington
provides only about 10 percent of
the nation’s education budget, while
state and local governments fund the
rest. “we’ve seen 50 years of federal attempts to move the needle on
graduation rates with little results,”
says Lindsey Burke, a policy analyst
at the conservative Heritage foundation think tank in washington.
“There’s a pattern of large-scale federal education reform programs, such
as Head Start and others, that are
failing in their stated mission. This is
an issue better left to the states and
local districts, especially because
washington is only a 10 percent stakeholder in education.”
Ravitch and others say federal “interference” in state and local education policy harms the national graduation rate instead of helping it. They
say the galaxy of practices often lumped
together as “school reform,” many supported by the Obama administration
— practices such as charter schools,
performance-based pay for teachers
and extensive standardized testing —
are distractions. It’s time, they say, to
let teachers teach. “If Uncle Sam is
going to be involved in schooling, his
role should be constructive and constrained. And recently it hasn’t been,”
says Hess at AEI.
Brookings’ Haskins counters, “Schools
just haven’t been doing their job for
decades. I think politics is driving some
arguments. I don’t see any danger that
the feds are going to take over the
schools; they may have been a little
heavy-handed . . . but leaving the per-
514
CQ Researcher
formance of the schools to the states
and localities does not do the job.”
Lovell of the Alliance for Excellent
Education says, “If schools could fix
this problem by themselves, why are
we now applauding a graduation rate
where one-fifth of our students are
[still] failing to graduate?”
while the graduation rate has been
inching up, it is still too early to determine the effects of relatively recent
federal programs, such as Race to the
Top. Says George washington’s ferguson, “Until we sort out the federal role,
it will be difficult to make any lasting
progress.”
BACKGROUND
Early Origins
lthough the history of U.S.
schools goes back to 1635, when
the Boston Latin Grammar School
opened, early schools were vastly different from those today. The first high
schools were private and reserved for
the privileged few in a time when
most people had little schooling.
The nation’s first public high school,
Boston’s English Classical School, did
not open until 1821; others followed
in New England and New York. Still,
at a time when jobs generally didn’t
require high school diplomas, only a
small part of the population attended
high school and fewer graduated. In
1870, 50,000 students were attending
500 public high schools across the
country, and just 2 percent of the nation’s 17-year-olds graduated. 35
“It can be said that the modern public high school was born when the
michigan Supreme Court ruled in 1874
that taxes could be levied to support
public high schools as well as elementary schools,” according to a history of high school prepared for the
A
U.S. Department of Education. 36 Taxsupported schools became common,
enrollment was opened to girls and
working-class children attended to
learn skilled trades.
By 1940, for the first time in the
nation’s history, half of all high school
students were graduating. A decade
later, that number had jumped to
about two-thirds. 37 with these higher numbers, the high school diploma
came to be seen a valuable credential and for many jobs, a requirement.
“Waste We Cannot Afford”
s more students attended high
school, more inevitably left school
before graduating, but the issue of
“dropouts” did not receive major national attention until the 1960s. “Educators and others may have been worried about attrition before 1960, but few
defined it as a crisis,” according to Sherman Dorn, an education professor at
the University of South florida in
Tampa who has written about the history of the issue. 38
The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of
Sputnik, the first spacecraft to orbit
Earth, began the space race and fueled concerns that America and American education were slipping behind
the Soviet Union. The failure of many
students to graduate from high school
soon became a national issue. “How
American education solves the problem of school dropouts . . . may well
determine America’s future,” said
Daniel Schreiber, who in the early
1960s was director of the National Education Association’s Project on School
Dropouts. 39
The term “dropout” entered the national consciousness. In 1960, Life magazine described the consequences:
“Leaving school is usually one more
step on a treadmill of discouragement,
failure and escape. But the individual
tragedy is also a national waste.” 40
A
Continued on p. 516
Chronology
1940s-1980s
1990-2000 NaWith high school open to all,
tion’s focus on education and
publish report that describes
“dropout factories” with graduation
rates below 60 percent.
concept of “dropout” emerges.
dropouts sharpens.
1940
Almost 80 percent of high-school-age
teens are enrolled, and half of 17year-olds are high school graduates.
1991
Congress kills Bush’s America 2000
legislation, which calls for national
standards and student assessments.
2005
All states agree to use a single
method to track graduation rates.
. . . Bill & melinda Gates foundation
steps up dropout program funding.
1954
Supreme Court’s landmark Brown
v. Board of Education decision
holds racial segregation in public
schools unconstitutional.
1994
Congress passes President Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 initiative calling
for states to develop education
standards. . . . Improving America’s
Schools Act ties federal funds to
adoption of standards.
2008
Barack Obama elected president
after campaigning on education
platform. . . . Review of 22 dropoutprevention programs finds none
raise graduation rates.
1962
The National Education Association’s
Project on School Dropouts is one of
the first to explore the dropout issue.
1963
President John f. Kennedy initiates
campaign to publicize the dropout
issue.
1965
Congress passes Elementary and
Secondary Education Assistance Act,
first broad federal funding for public schools, targeted largely at the
poorest schools.
1983
The widely discussed report “A Nation at Risk” depicts the U.S. education system as failing and students lagging behind those in other
industrialized countries, but does
not directly deal with dropouts.
1988
George H. w. Bush elected president; vows to be the “education
president.”
1989
Congress kills Bush education initiative; president’s “education summit” produces few concrete results.
Bush pledges to raise the graduation rate to 90 percent by 2000.
www.cqresearcher.com
1997
former presidents hold President’s
Summit on America’s future, drawing attention to the dropout crisis.
. . . America’s Promise Alliance, a
partnership of groups focused on
education policy, evolves from the
summit.
2000
U.S. Army launches Operation
Graduation ad campaign to encourage at-risk students and dropouts to
complete high school.
•
2001-Present
Reform movement goes national,
creates backlash.
2001
No Child Left Behind Act, centerpiece
of national school reform, calls for
annual testing in reading and math,
with penalties for failing schools.
Schools must comply in order to receive federal funds. Launched with
bipartisan support, the law becomes
increasingly controversial over time.
2004
Johns Hopkins University researchers
2009
In his first State of the Union speech,
Obama says, “Dropping out of high
school is no longer an option.” . . .
Congress approves $4.35 billion for
Race to the Top grants for states with
education reform plans; 41 states
compete for grants.
2010
America’s Promise Alliance launches
Grad Nation Initiative, focusing on
dropout prevention.
2011
with changes to No Child Left Behind stalled in Congress, Obama
administration grants waivers of the
law’s requirements to states that
make changes such as tying teacher
evaluations to test scores. Opponents
say the administration is using federal
money to impose its policies.
2013
Administrators of the GED, the
widely used high school equivalency test, announce tests will increase in price and have to be
taken on computers; some states
drop the GEDs.
2014
National high school graduation
rate hits 80 percent in 2012.
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GED Gets a modern makeover
Critics say the venerable high school equivalency test is on borrowed time
he General Educational Development (GED) test, the
72-year-old measure of high school equivalency for
dropouts, recently underwent a major transformation —
more than a decade since it was last revised.
The new version, introduced early this year, was designed
to better align the GED with the new Common Core curriculum standards, be more rigorous and better evaluate “career
and college readiness skills” than its predecessor.
However, some educators say the revised test is too difficult, expensive and inconvenient to take, and recent research
has many questioning its value.
Created in 1942 and largely used after world war II by veterans who had not had a chance to finish high school, the
“second-chance” test since then has helped both veterans and
civilians qualify for jobs, higher education and education loans.
One out of seven high school credentials is a GED certificate,
and in 2011 about 723,000 students took the tests; their average age was 26. 1
The revised test emphasizes critical thinking and includes
more questions on science and more writing than the previous version. for example, test-takers will now have to analyze
literature and form arguments to answer essay questions.
Some adult educators worry that it will take at least a year
to prepare students for the overhauled test. As one education
writer noted, teachers “worry that their students, who are already
beaten down and vulnerable, will give up.” 2 One potential testtaker told USA Today, “we’re already trying to cram in four years
of education. Now you’re trying to cram in more.” 3
Proponents of the new GED say it is an improvement on
the previous version because it promotes critical thinking —
T
Continued from p. 514
Sociologist Lucius f. Cervantes saw
even more dire consequences, writing in 1965, “It is from this hard core
of dropouts that a high proportion of
the gangsters, hoodlums, drug addicted, government-dependent-prone,
irresponsible and illegitimate parents
of tomorrow will be inevitably recruited.” 41
Concern extended beyond academic researchers. President John f.
Kennedy initiated a national campaign
in 1963 to publicize the dropout
issue and help local school districts
identify and help potential dropouts.
Noting that four out of 10 fifth-graders
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CQ Researcher
for example, by requiring essay answers instead of relying solely on multiple choice. “How many apples and oranges? That’s
not the kind of question that employers ask anymore,” said
Lynn Bartlett, at Sunrise Tech Center near Sacramento, Calif.
“Our instructional model is changing to match the new reality, the new vocabulary. . . . So when students earn the GED,
it says they’ve accomplished something that’s needed in today’s
economy and workplace.” 4
The new GED will better prepare students for jobs, maintains C. T. Turner, director of public affairs at the GED Testing Service. “If we don’t provide them something of value, and
they don’t have the information and skills they need, we are
setting them up for failure.” 5
The test will also be more expensive, with fees jumping
in some states from $65 to $120 (massachusetts), $35 to $130
(North Carolina) and $95 to $160 (Georgia). Jeff Putthoff, a
Jesuit priest who is founder and executive director of Hopeworks N’ Camden, a New Jersey-based youth development
organization, wrote, “The monetary hurdle is now huge. Besides having to travel significant distance and incur the cost
of trains, tolls or parking, the fee to take the test has increased by nearly 300 percent. for the poorest among us the
challenge to become employable is that much harder. How
does one get the money to take the test needed to get a job
to earn money?” 6
The new test also will be offered exclusively on computers, which some educators say will create a barrier for some
students, especially those lacking ready access to a computer.
“for someone who doesn’t have access to technology on a
daily basis, we have to spend a lot of time on just the basic
did not finish high school, he called
the dropout problem a “waste we
cannot afford.” 42 In 1965, as part of
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war
on Poverty, Congress enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act (ESEA) to allocate federal funds
to schools and districts based on the
proportion of low-income children enrolled, thus aiming to improve the
chances that poor children would
graduate.
However, few of the dropout prevention programs in the 1960s were
successful. “The programs rarely fulfilled their advocates’ wishes, either in
scope or in nature of programs. Con-
strained by budget limits, informal protocol, and often contradictory demands
of sponsors and clients, programs
failed to eliminate dropping out,” according to Dorn. 43
Although the U.S. Department of
Education was created in 1979, at a
time of growing discussion about
the importance of education, the
dropout issue did not receive as
much attention during the 1970s and
’80s as it had during the 1960s. Indeed, the 1983 “A Nation at Risk”
report, which many educators cite
as the impetus for the modern era
of education reform, warned of a
“rising tide of mediocrity” in the pub-
— Robert Kiener
lic schools “that threatens our very
future as a nation and a people.” It
called for more rigorous graduation
requirements, but did not even mention the dropout issue. 44
Between 1988 and 1995 only 89 of
the nation’s approximately 15,000
school districts won federal grants for
dropout prevention. 45 Even some generously funded dropout prevention programs recorded poor results. for example, New York City’s school system
spent more than $120 million between
1985 and 1989 on a prevention program. more than half of its participants
left school by the third year of the
program, and fewer than 40 percent
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Getty Images/The Denver Post/K. Scott Olser
mechanics of using a mouse and moving around the screen,”
said Lecester Johnson, executive director of the Academy of
Hope, an adult education center in washington, D.C. 7
In addition, some researchers question the value of getting
a GED. According to a study by James Heckman, a Nobel
Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, typical
GED holders don’t earn any more during their lifetimes than
the typical high school dropout. His study also showed that
the availability of the GED may influence capable students to
drop out and apply for the less-onerous GED exam instead of
studying for a high school diploma. (One-quarter of the nation’s 673,000 GED recipients in 2012 were 18 or younger.) He
recommends raising the minimum age for taking the GED from
17 to 20 to dissuade students from dropping out of school in
hopes of taking the “easier” GED. 8
Given concerns about the difficulty, cost, inconvenience and
value of the GED, it’s not surprising that at least nine states have
decided to stop offering GED testing as an alternative to a high
school diploma. 9 meanwhile, some private companies are offering less expensive pencil and paper alternatives to the GED.
States determine which tests they will offer, according to Brian
Belardi, director of media relations for mcGraw-Hill, which publishes one of the competing tests. His company’s test is recognized
in seven states as an official equivalency test, he says — in three
exclusively instead of the GED, and in four as one alternative.
“Angst is the good word” to describe the current GED situation, said Lennox mcLendon, executive director of the National Adult Education Professional Development Consortium. 10
Graduates move their tassels after receiving their
GED certificates from a Denver Rescue Mission
education program. Participants typically overcome
such obstacles as homelessness or unemployment.
1 Caralee J. Adams, “New GED tests stir concerns, draw competitors,” Education Week, June 6, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/nohbv44.
2 Kavitha Cardoza, “The GED test is about to get much harder, and much
more expensive,” The Atlantic, Oct. 8, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/m8hkdua.
3 michael Auslen, “GED test takers to study harder, pay more,” USA Today,
July 24, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/pzqb8xq.
4 Loretta Kalb, “New GED test requires computer skills, more knowledge,”
The Sacramento Bee, Jan. 13, 2014, www.sacbee.com/2014/01/13/6069988/newged-testing-requires-computer.html.
5 Cardoza, op. cit.
6 Jeff Putthoff, S.J., “GED overhaul diminishing hope,” The Huffington Post,
April 2, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/o759dea.
7 Ibid.
8 whet moser, “How to fix the GED,” Chicago Magazine, April 10, 2014,
http://tinyurl.com/kjxjfre.
9 Kimberly Hefling, “GED test overhauled; some states opt for new exam,”
The Associated Press, Jan. 1, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/lohqv3q.
10 Ibid.
improved attendance. 46 As the Heritage foundation noted, “The study’s
most significant finding is that it made
no difference whether students participated only one year or for the full
three years. . . . At a cost of more
than $8,000 per student, this program
failed to assist even half of the participants.” 47
However, beginning in the 1980s,
the mission of high school had
begun to shift, according to Johns
Hopkins researcher Balfanz. “In response to the nation’s transition from
an industrial to an information economy, academic preparation once again
became a priority. No longer an end
point in the public education system,
the American high school is now
being asked to prepare all its students for postsecondary schooling
and training required for full economic and social participation in U.S.
society. In short, it is being challenged to make good on its potential and become an avenue of advancement for all.” 48
Seeking Solutions
n 1989, newly inaugurated President George H. w. Bush, who had
promised during his campaign to be-
I
June 13, 2014
517
DROPOUT RATE
Educate America Act, signed into law
in march 1994, reiterated the target
of a 90 percent graduation rate by
2000. The measure also called for
states to develop educational standards but gave them control over the
content of those standards. Initially
the law required the federal government to approve standards, but that
condition was dropped after critics
said washington was trying to impose a nationwide curriculum on local
school districts. 51
Another 1994 law, the Improving
America’s Schools Act, which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary
AFP/Getty Images/Saul Loeb
come an “education president,” organized an education summit of the nation’s governors. The meeting resulted in a commitment to a set of “national
performance goals” to be achieved by
2000. Among them was raising the
graduation rate to 90 percent by 2000,
announced in Bush’s State of the
Union address in 1990, when the graduation rate was 71 percent. 49
Graduation rates did not improve
markedly, however, and education reform received little support during the
remainder of the Bush administration.
“four years into his presidency — and
three years after expectations had
President George W. Bush proposed the No Child Left Behind Act three days
after his Jan. 20, 2001, inauguration. Passed with bipartisan support, the law
called for annual testing in reading and math, with penalties for schools that
failed to achieve “adequate yearly progress.” The law greatly expanded the
federal government’s power over the nation’s education system. Above,
the president speaks on the law at the public Gen. Philip Kearny
School in Philadelphia on Jan. 8, 2009.
been raised with the education summit — no substantial education legislation had been enacted,” according to
a summary of the history of federal
education policy prepared by the New
York State Archives for a continuing
research project on the history of education policy. 50
Like Bush, President Bill Clinton,
during his 1992 campaign, emphasized education. His Goals 2000: The
518
CQ Researcher
Education Act, required states to adopt
education standards in order to receive
federal funds. The act also required
assessments of students at some point
between grades three and five and
again in high school. The two laws
gave the federal government authority to enforce teaching standards, but
the Clinton administration never used
its power to take money away from
states that did not comply. 52
Research examining the dropout
issue also evolved during the 1980s
and ’90s. much early research had
been based on the belief that dropping out was the student’s fault and
supported this belief with an examination of demographic and behavioral characteristics of these students. 53 In the 1990s, however,
researchers broadened the scope of
their research, in particular to include
longitudinal studies — based on data
collected over time — to see how
students fared in different environments. By following students over
time, researchers gained greater insight, for example, into the weight of
economic and social factors on dropping out.
By the late 1990s, with rising interest in school reform, numerous private organizations, think tanks and
university-based research institutes
had been established to formulate and
help implement school-reform programs, including dropout prevention
efforts. Among these were the Center
for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association, Colin Powell’s
America’s Promise Alliance, the Council for Basic Education, the manhattan
Institute’s Center for Civic Innovation,
the Center for Education Reform and
many more.
Research and Action
ederal attention to education policy increased in the 21st century.
Three days into his presidency, in January 2001, President George w. Bush
announced his first legislative proposal — the No Child Left Behind Act
(NCLB), which passed that year with
bipartisan support. The law, signed by
Bush in January 2002, called for annual testing in reading and math with
penalties for schools that failed to
achieve “adequate yearly progress.” federal funding was tied to the law’s requirements. The NCLB greatly ex-
f
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Because the administration required
states and school districts to enact certain education policies to qualify for the
funding, such as promising to adopt formal standards for content and testing in
subjects such as math and English, some
critics claimed that Race to the Top gave
the federal government even more control over education matters.
Said New York University’s Ravitch,
“The Obama administration pretended that states participated of their own
volition, thus maintaining the fiction
that Race to the Top was ‘voluntary’
and that the federal government was
not calling the tune.” 56
waivers from NCLB requirements
and still receive federal funding. To
get a waiver, a state must agree to
adopt policies such as tying teacher
evaluations to good test scores. fortytwo states and the District of Columbia had received waivers as of
early 2014. 58
Republicans complained that the
waivers were a violation of executive
power and accused Education Secretary Duncan and the administration of
circumventing congressional authority.
They also argued the program forces
states to adopt education policies favored by the administration. In 2011
Getty Images/Win McNamee
panded the federal government’s power
over the nation’s education system. A
primary objective of the legislation was
increasing high school graduation rates.
Continuing debate over the measure,
its requirements and its effects still
shapes the national discussion about
education.
Philanthropic organizations, such
as the Bill & melinda Gates foundation, the walmart foundation and
the Carnegie foundation, invested in
reform strategies that sought to increase high school achievement and
improve graduation rates. In february 2005, the Gates foundation
pledged $15 million to improve the
nation’s “obsolete” high schools over
time. As microsoft cofounder-turnedphilanthropist Bill Gates explained,
“By obsolete, I don’t just mean that
our high schools are broken, flawed
and under-funded — though a case
could be made for every one of those
points. By obsolete, I mean that our
high schools — even when they’re
working exactly as designed — cannot teach our kids what they need
to know today. . . . The poor performance of our high schools in
preparing students for college is a
major reason why the United States
has now dropped from first to fifth
in the percentage of young adults
with a college degree.” 54
In President Obama’s first State of
the Union address, in february 2009,
when he declared that dropping out
was “no longer an option,” he called
for efforts to increase the graduation
rate. That month, Congress approved
$4.35 billion in federal stimulus money
for a competitive school grant program called Race to the Top, which
offered schools and districts federal
grants for reform programs that were
innovative and could be measured for
their effectiveness. 55 Likewise, the
federal Investing in Innovation fund,
created at the same time, provided
$650 million to schools to expand innovative reforms.
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, head the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, a major contributor of funding for education initiatives. In
2005 the foundation pledged $15 million to improve the nation’s “obsolete” high
schools. “The poor performance of our high schools in preparing students for
college is a major reason why the United States has dropped from first to fifth in
the percentage of young adults with a college degree,” Bill Gates said then.
Although educators, politicians and
others say NCLB should be changed,
they sharply disagree on how. Although the law has not been reauthorized since 2007, its provisions remain
in force. 57
Beginning in 2011, the administration permitted states to apply for
Duncan said he was offering waivers
because Congress had failed to rewrite
NCLB, which he termed a “slow motion train wreck.” He added, “The current law serves as a disincentive to
higher standards, rather than as an incentive.” 59
June 13, 2014
519
DROPOUT RATE
CURRENT
SITUATION
Washington Gridlock
s with legislation on numerous
other issues, several federal education policy measures are stalled in
the gridlock among the Democratic
administration, the Democratic-controlled
Senate and the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives. In addition
AFP/Getty Images/Mandel Ngan
A
like anything will be happening soon,”
says ferguson at George washington.
Education experts cite a growing disconnect between the administration and
Congress, and within Congress itself, regarding the extent of the federal role
in education. Broadly speaking, Republicans favor little federal involvement in
education policy while Democrats believe the federal government has a role
in telling states how to identify and fix
low-performing schools.
“we sorely need a smarter, more coherent vision of the federal role in K12 education,” wrote Hess, director of
education policy studies at the Ameri-
President Obama examines a student project at the Pathways in Technology
Early College High School, in Brooklyn, part of the New York City public school
system, on Oct. 25, 2013. If the United States brought all high school students
up to minimum proficiency levels, as much as $72 trillion would be
added to the country’s gross domestic product over the lifetime of a child
born in 2010, an international research organization estimated.
to reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), stalled legislation includes
funding for measures that support children with disabilities, career and technical education, educational research
and more.
“Despite the president’s request during his recent State of the Union address that Congress get moving on passing education legislation, it doesn’t look
520
CQ Researcher
can Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Linda
Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford. “Yet both parties find
themselves hemmed in. Republicans are
stuck debating whether, rather than
how, the federal government ought to
be involved in education, while Democrats
are squeezed between superintendents,
school boards and teachers’ unions that
want money with no strings, and ac-
tivists with little patience for concerns
about federal overreach.” 60
Two recent pieces of legislation illustrate the ideological differences. The
Republican-sponsored Student Success
Act seeks to reduce the federal role in
education policy. As its backers said,
“House Republicans are determined to
put an end to the Obama administration’s overreach in our nation’s classrooms and empower communities to fix
our broken education system. for too
long, states and school districts have been
inundated with federal intervention and
bureaucratic red tape that has done little
to improve student performance.” 61
The Senate bill, the Democraticsponsored Strengthening America’s
Schools Act of 2013, includes federal
oversight of school programs and would
establish requirements that schools
and districts must meet in order to receive federal funding. Unlike the House
bill, the Senate measure gives the federal government a supervisory role.
“There’s a world of difference between the two bills,” says Lovell at the
Alliance for Excellent Education.
Congressional Republicans have complained that by offering NCLB waivers,
Education Secretary Duncan and the administration are “leapfrogging” Congress
to create their own version of the law.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the top
Republican on the Senate Education
Committee and a former secretary of
Education (1991-93), recently said, “Too
often, this administration has turned competitive grants into federal mandates.” 62
However, Duncan said, “To avoid
getting bogged down by the dysfunctionality of washington, I had to
go directly to the states who are teaching the kids and to the employers who
are hiring them.” 63
“maybe Duncan has not helped by
offering waivers, but what was he going
to do?” asks George washington’s ferguson. “Congress was doing nothing
about education reform to improve
graduation rates, and he wanted to
Continued on p. 522
At Issue:
Should all states raise the high school dropout age to 18?
BOB WISE
FRANKLIN SCHARGEL
PRESIDENT, ALLIANCE FOR EXCELLENT
EDUCATION; FORMER GOVERNOR,
WEST VIRGINIA
SCHARGEL CONSULTING GROUP; AUTHOR
OF 12 EDUCATION REFORM BOOKS INCLUDING CREATING SAFE SCHOOLS: A
GUIDE FOR SCHOOL LEADERS, TEACHERS,
COUNSELORS AND PARENTS
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, JUNE 2014
a
ll states should raise the legal high school dropout
age to 18, but not because it will automatically increase graduation rates — it won’t. Rather they should
do it because of the message it sends students, parents, the
public and the state about the critical importance of a high
school diploma in today’s global economy.
fifty years ago, high school dropouts could still land wellpaying jobs and support their families. But times have
changed. Today, jobs that require relatively little education are
disappearing. According to research from the Georgetown
University Center on Education and the workforce, only about
10 percent of jobs are open to high school dropouts, compared
with more than 30 percent in 1973.
Still, hundreds of thousands of students continue to drop
out of high school every year. But passing a law that forces
students to continue going to school must be only a first legislative action, not the final one. In fact, research from the Brookings Institution finds that states with higher compulsory school
attendance ages do not have higher graduation rates than
states with lower age requirements. Raising the compulsory
age does little to address the root causes of why students
drop out, which include difficult transitions from middle
school to high school, an absence of basic reading and math
skills and a lack of engagement.
As states debate whether to increase the compulsory school
age, they must also provide the kind of education that engages
students and give them a reason to want stay in school. Requiring compulsory attendance also means that state legislators
need to plan for the additional classrooms, teachers and other
resources needed to serve additional students who are now
staying in school. Ensuring that all students have access to
effective teachers and rigorous and engaging content is a
good place to start — as is additional support, both academic
and social — for students who have fallen behind.
Raising the compulsory attendance age can be a powerful
motivational tool to express commitment to high school graduation, but only if it’s accompanied by supporting policies and
resources. while a legislative mandate increasing the compulsory
school age can force students to attend school, it can’t force
them to learn. Provided that policymakers understand this
important distinction, raising the dropout age to 18 can be
one of the tools in their toolbox to increase high school
graduation rates.
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, JUNE 2014
yes no
i
f America is to be globally competitive, it must have a
high-performing, highly trained, technologically prepared
workforce. And that means, at minimum, a high school
diploma. I believe all students should stay in school until they
graduate. However, that does not mean that all states should
require that students remain in school until they are 18.
U.S. education is primarily a state and local responsibility.
But President Obama and a number of state legislatures believe that the dropout age should be raised to 18. There is
little data to indicate that will reduce dropout rates, according
to a report by the Rennie Center for Education Research and
Policy. “Our review revealed that there is little research to
support the effectiveness of compulsory attendance laws in
achieving these goals,” said the report.
Some states that require students to stay in school until age
18 have some of the nation’s highest graduation rates (such as
Nebraska and wisconsin, both with 88 percent graduating)
and some of the lowest, such as New mexico (70 percent)
and the District of Columbia (59 percent). So it is not the age
of mandatory attendance that determines the dropout rate, but
other factors. Simply mandating that young people remain in
school without addressing the causes for their leaving will accomplish little.
There are five reasons children leave school prior to graduation:
• The childrens’ bad decisions — getting pregnant, becoming involved in alcohol or drugs, committing crimes.
• The families they come from — low income, dropouts
themselves, a clash of cultures between families and schools.
• The communities they come from — places where there
are gangs, violence and drugs.
• The schools they attend, which are toxic to learning.
• The teachers they have — we give the least experienced,
least trained teachers the most difficult students.
If we wish to eliminate dropouts we need to deal with
these causes. By raising the dropout age, we add additional
costs, for additional classrooms, teachers, support personnel
and alternative online courses. This is foolhardy, especially
when so many states have already cut into the marrow of
education. Changing the dropout age is a simplistic, sound-bite
solution to a complex problem.
no
www.cqresearcher.com
June 13, 2014
521
DROPOUT RATE
Continued from p. 520
act. The Congress said ‘How dare you!’
and we have a stalemate.”
Fewer “Dropout Factories”
bright point in the April 2014 “Building a GradNation” report was the
continued decline in the number of
what have been called dropout factories — high schools with graduation
rates of 60 percent or lower. Over the
last decade, such schools, which are re-
Courtesy America’s Promise
A
quired to report graduation results to
the government.
In 2004, almost half of the nation’s
African-American high school students and nearly 40 percent of Hispanic students were enrolled in such
schools. By 2012 those levels had fallen to 23 percent and 15 percent, respectively. 64
Balfanz of Johns Hopkins, who wrote
a groundbreaking report on dropout
factories in 2004, says, “Once the word
got out about these dropout factories,
there was a concerted effort by the
A student addresses a meeting in Washington in April to discuss the 2014
“Building a GradNation” report, an annual update on dropout prevention efforts
issued by America’s Promise Alliance, an education policy organization started
by retired Gen. Colin Powell, and other policy groups. This year’s report
underscored the differences in nationwide graduation rates. Blacks, for example,
graduate at a 69 percent rate and Hispanics at 73 percent, compared
with whites at 86 percent and Asian-Americans at 88 percent.
sponsible for an outsized proportion of
students who do not graduate, have
been targeted for reform or closure.
The number of these schools has
declined from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,359
in 2012. There were still a million students attending the schools, but that
was down from 2.2 million in 2002.
Some schools improved their graduation rate, some closed and some had
so many students transfer to other
schools that they were no longer re-
522
CQ Researcher
government, communities, businesses
and foundations to make changes.”
Concern Over Standards
ith the recent rise in graduation
rates, many educators and administrators say they are cautiously optimistic about the state of the nation’s
high schools. The caution stems from
concern about the quality of the edu-
w
cation some students are receiving. “The
numbers tell us that more students are
graduating, but we don’t know much
about the quality of those diplomas,”
says Rumberger at the University of
California-Santa Barbara. “more students
may have a diploma, but how prepared are they to enter the workforce?
we don’t know if they are just barely
passing or doing better.”
Some recent test results are causing
educators concern. for example, average reading scores from the just-released
2013 National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) — the “Nation’s Report Card” — have not improved from
2009 — and are lower than results from
1992. 65 Based on approximately 92,000
students’ test results nationwide, the 2013
scores showed that only 38 percent of
the country’s high school seniors were
reading at or above the “proficient” level
and that only 26 percent scored at or
above “proficient” in mathematics.
According to David Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the content and operation of NAEP, the findings
are particularly troubling for further
student success. “Achievement at this
very critical point in a student’s life
must be improved to ensure success
after high school,” he said. 66
Nevertheless, some states are reducing long-held requirements for graduation, a move that critics call “dumbing down” the high school curriculum.
florida stopped requiring students to
study chemistry, physics and Algebra II
to graduate, and Texas dropped its
Algebra II requirement. washington
state dropped requirements that students study a foreign language. Nevada
lowered the score needed to pass a
high school math proficiency exam
from 300 (out of 500) to 242. 67
Some see the state changes as a
rebellion against the Common Core
standards, a curriculum developed by
the nation’s governors that is being
phased in nationally. 68 Conservatives
have charged that the standards —
which set national benchmarks for what
students should learn in reading, writing and math in each grade — interfere with local control of education.
Some educators complain that they put
too much emphasis on testing.
Opponents of Common Core’s
“college-prep” curriculum also say high
schools should provide education suitable for all students, not just those
who intend to go to college. Democratic New mexico state Rep. mimi
Stewart, a retired teacher who introduced a bill to let students graduate
without passing state exams or taking
Algebra II, said, “we are supposed to
be doing college and career readiness,
not college and college readiness.” 69
Critics claim it is a mistake to lower
standards. “If we are making it much
easier for people to receive that diploma, I’m not confident it will translate into
successful life outcomes,” says AEI’s Hess.
Others say that with American students falling further behind many of
their counterparts in industrialized nations in subjects such as science, mathematics and reading comprehension,
lower standards will widen the gap.
“The U.S. system of education and
training is inadequate in the new global environment,” wrote journalist fareed Zakaria, who specializes in international affairs. 70 He and others
warn that raising standards, not lowering them, is the only way the United States can compete globally.
OUTLOOK
Striving for 90 Percent
ome optimists say U.S. graduation
rates are on track to improve.
“four successive presidents have set
high goals for graduation rates only
to see them fall short of the mark,”
says Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins re-
S
www.cqresearcher.com
searcher. “But after years of flat-lining
graduation rates, it looks like we finally have a shot at reaching that muchtalked-about 90 percent graduation rate.
Identifying, then improving, dropout
factories was a start; now we have to
keep working to increase how we support at-risk, low-income students.”
The stakes are huge. According to
the Alliance for Excellent Education, one
of the sponsors of the “Building a GradNation” report, reaching the 90 percent
goal for high school graduates nationwide would create as many as 65,700
jobs and boost the national economy by
as much as $10.9 billion. 71
But there is no way the nation can
reach the goal without meeting several tough challenges. “The recent numbers look good, but there is a lot of
unevenness in the graduation rates,”
says Lovell at the Alliance for Excellent Education. “we need to focus on
accountability, awareness and reform
if we want to get to 90 percent.”
According to Balfanz and other authors of the GradNation report, the
country must:
• Close the opportunity gap. Graduation gaps between low-income students and their middle-to-higherincome peers reach nearly 30 percentage
points in some states.
• Target students with disabilities, who
represent 13 percent of all students.
• Reform or reinvent urban high
schools so they help drive graduation
rates higher than current 50- and 60percent levels, so black and Hispanic
students don’t languish behind.
• Ensure big states, such as California, which has 13 percent of all students and 20 percent of all the nation’s low-income students, continue
to make significant progress.
“I think our chances are good,” says
wise, the former west virginia governor. He is enthusiastic about models
being developed to redesign high schools
and to provide more individual intervention and guidance and more cooperation between educators and the busi-
ness community. He is especially optimistic about how technology could boost
graduation rates: “Technology will be a
game changer. for example, tech will
provide data systems to allow teachers
to be like doctors, knowing exactly in
what areas a student is strong and
where they need help.”
The federal government’s role will
affect the future. “funding is key, especially because the income gap between low-income school communities and high-income areas will probably
keep growing,” says George washington’s ferguson.
Others warn that as long as washington is gridlocked, education will suffer. “The president’s shining a light on
the dropout issue has been a great
start,” says Balfanz, “but Congress has
to come together on education issues.”
The effect of the Common Core
standards on dropout rates is still unknown. Some educators think that if
the new curriculum is more rigorous
than that offered in the past, more students will drop out. Speaking of the
new program’s tests, Andrew Hacker,
a political scientist and professor emeritus in the political science department
at Queens College in New York City,
said, “There’s going to be a huge failure rate. It’s going to exacerbate the
. . . dropout rate we have among high
school students already.” 72
Others disagree, predicting that while
there may be a temporary decline in
graduation rates at the beginning, as
some students become frustrated, in
time the effect will be fewer dropouts.
The New York State Department of
Education points to research that shows
students want to be more challenged
in school, saying that seven out of 10
students who dropped out said they
were not motivated or inspired to
work hard in high school. 73
Rumberger at the University of
California-Santa Barbara stresses the need
for more research on the efficacy and
cost-effectiveness of intervention and reform programs. “Setting specific targets,
June 13, 2014
523
DROPOUT RATE
such as [the] 90 percent graduation rate,
is less useful than making a more fundamental commitment to improving
the lives of children and strengthening
the families, schools and communities
that serve them,” he says.
Notes
1
Lyndsey Layton, “High school graduation
rates at historic high,” The Washington Post,
April 28, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/nezh2mz.
2 “GradNation Summit focused on increased
grad rate, reaching last 20 percent,” America’s
Promise Alliance, April 28, 2014, http://tiny
url.com/on57r7l.
3 Arne Duncan, “Remarks to Grad Nation
Summit 2014,” April 28, 2014, http://tinyurl.
com/ngz6zb6.
4 Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error (2013), p. 324.
5 Lalita Clozel, “National high school graduation rate exceeds 80% for the first time,” Los
Angeles Times, April 28, 2014, http://tinyurl.
com/oyadaz6.
6 Amanda Paulson, “U.S. graduation rates hit
historic high,” The Christian Science Monitor,
April 28, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/qzjf2mc.
7 “Building a GradNation,” Civic Enterprises,
April 2014, http://tinyurl.com/p35yk2q.
8 marie Stetser and Robert Stilwell, “Public
High School four Year on Time Graduation
Rates and Event Dropout Rates: School Years
2010-2011 and 2011-2012, National Center for
Education Statistics, April 2014, p. 4, http://nces.
ed.gov/pubs2014/2014391.pdf.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 “Education and the economy: quick facts,”
National Education Association, http://tinyurl.
com/oyzbuff.
13
Ibid.
“Healthier and wealthier: Decreasing
Health Care Costs by Increasing Educational
Attainment,” Alliance for Excellent Education,
November 2006, http://tinyurl.com/pbah9fr; and
“Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults:
National Health Interview Survey, 2011,” U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services,
2011, http://tinyurl.com/oxfmuqb.
15 “Saving futures, saving dollars,” Alliance for
Excellent Education, September 2013, http://
tinyurl.com/kx5sw9k.
16 Robert Rothman, “How Does the United
States Stack Up? International Comparisons
of Academic Achievement,” Alliance for Excellent Education, January 2014, http://tiny
url.com/of52rub.
17 E. Hanushek and L. woessmann, “The High
Cost of Low Educational Performance,” Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2010, http://tinyurl.com/kphp3uq.
18 “OECD countries with the highest high
school graduation rates,” Aneki.com Rankings
and Records, http://tinyurl.com/lmslqp3.
19 “Remarks of President Barack Obama —
Address to Joint Session of Congress,” The white
House, feb. 24, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/dc8oob.
20 Shannon mcfarland, “Obama Proposal to
Raise Dropout Age falls flat,” The Associated
Press, June 16, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/musz4wc.
21 “Dropout Crisis facts,” America’s Promise
Alliance, http://tinyurl.com/myr3xch.
22 Chris Chapman, Jennifer Laird, Nicole Ifill
and Angelina Kewal Ramani, “Trends in high
school dropout and completion rates in the
United States: 1972-2009.” National Center for
Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2012,
p. 6, http://tinyurl.com/3vuwwzt.
23 “Building a GradNation,” op. cit., pp. 16-17.
24 mary Clare Reim, “Barriers to high school
completion creates barriers to economic mobility,” The Heritage foundation, may 15, 2014,
http://tinyurl.com/l4o4ufg.
14
About the Author
Robert Kiener is a freelance writer based in Vermont whose
work has appeared in The London Sunday Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, Time Life Books and other publications. For more than
two decades he worked as an editor and correspondent in
Guam, Hong Kong, Canada and England. He holds an M.A.
in Asian studies from Hong Kong University and an M.Phil.
in international relations from England’s Cambridge University.
524
CQ Researcher
25
Ravitch, op. cit., p. 324.
“florida’s Education Revolution,” foundation
for Excellence in Education, 2013, http://tiny
url.com/msux4p5; Alyssa Zauderer and James
ford, “City graduation rates reach all time high,
so why is de Blasio still critical of Bloomberg’s
education policies?,” Pix 11, Dec. 4, 2013,
http://tinyurl.com/lceblcn; and “Children first
Intensive,” New York City Department of Education, undated, http://tinyurl.com/mhljy2x.
27 “Darlington County, South Carolina,” U.S. Census Bureau, undated, http://tinyurl.com/mo45ro8.
28 “How we compare with other districts in
the state,” Darlington County School District,
undated, http://tinyurl.com/buovqhv.
29 “Graduation Counts: A Report of the NGA
Task force on State High School Graduation
Data,” National Governors Association, 2005,
www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/050
7GRAD.PDf.
30 marcella R. Dianda, “Preventing future
High School Dropouts: An Advocacy and Action Guide for NEA State and Local Affiliates,
National Education Association, p. 77, November 2008, http://tinyurl.com/o26cn4b.
31 Lyndsey Layton, “federal analysis of school
grants shows mixed results,” The Washington
Post, Nov. 21, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/oguvump.
32 Ibid.
33 “Building a GradNation,” op. cit.
34 Ravitch, op. cit., p. 282.
35 Ernest L. Boyer, High School: A Report on
Secondary Education in America (1983), p. 49.
36 “from There to Here: The Road to Reform
of American High Schools,” The High School
Leadership Summit, http://tinyurl.com/o8xyxvz.
37 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, National Center for Education Statistics, http://
tinyurl.com/2vpfm8.
38 Sherman Dorn, Creating the Dropout (1996),
p. 51.
39 Ibid., p. 65.
40 Ibid., p. 66.
41 “Understanding Dropouts,” op. cit., p. 11;
and Dorn, op. cit., p. 69.
42 margaret Spellings and Edward m. Kennedy,
“National epidemic, economic necessity,” Politico, may 11, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/nkd4cjn.
43 Dorn, op. cit., p. 81.
44 “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,” National Commission on Excellence in Education, April 1983, http://
tinyurl.com/2878wlj.
45 “School Dropouts: Education could play a
stronger role in identifying and disseminating promising prevention strategies,” U.S. General Accounting Office, february 2002, p. 5,
26
http://tinyurl.com/mdt5sop; and “Number of
public school districts and public and private
elementary and secondary schools: Selected
years, 1869-70 through 2010-11,” Digest of Education Statistics, National Center for Education
Statistics, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/m5x2a47.
46 Joseph Berger, “Dropout Plans Not working,
Study finds,” The New York Times, may 16, 1990,
http://tinyurl.com/lmg44pm.
47 michael J. mcLaughlin, “High school dropouts:
How much of a crisis?” The Heritage foundation, Aug. 3, 1990, http://tinyurl.com/klycvzb.
48 Robert Balfanz, “Can the American High
School Become an Avenue of Advancement
for All?” The Future of Children, Spring 2009,
http://tinyurl.com/l69h9kw.
49 “federal education policy and the states,
1945-2009: A brief synopsis,” States’ Impact on
federal Education Policy Project, New York
State Archives, Albany, January 2006, revised
November 2009, p. 56, www.archives.nysed.
gov/edpolicy/altformats/ed_background_over
view_essay.pdf; and “Public High School Graduation Rates,” National Center for Higher Education management Systems, undated, www.
higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/?year=1990&level=
nation&mode=map&state=0&submeasure=36.
50 Ibid., p. 59 (New York State Archives).
51 for background, see Charles S. Clark, “Education Standards,” CQ Researcher, march 11,
1994, pp. 217-240; and Kathy Koch, “National
Education Standards,” CQ Researcher, may 14,
1999, pp. 401-424.
52 for background, see Kenneth Jost, “Revising No Child Left Behind,” CQ Researcher,
April 16, 2010, pp. 337-360.
53 Karen E. Stout and Sandra L. Christenson,
“Staying on Track for High School Graduation: Promoting Student Engagement,” The Prevention Researcher, vol. 16 (3), September 2009,
pp. 17-20, www.tpronline.org/article.cfm/Stay
ing_on_Track_for_High_School_Graduation.
54 “Bill Gates, “National Education Summit on
High Schools,” Bill & melinda Gates foundation, feb. 26, 2005, http://tinyurl.com/l7defsg.
55 Race to the Top fund, U.S. Department of
Education, undated, http://tinyurl.com/ygr6mw9.
56 Ravitch, op. cit., p. 281.
57 Jost, op. cit.
58 “NCLB waivers: A State-By-State Breakdown,”
Education Week, updated feb. 25, 2014, http://
tinyurl.com/n474jeb.
59 Sam Dillon, “Overriding a key education
law,” The New York Times, Aug. 8, 2011,
http://tinyurl.com/42zxnhl.
60 frederick m. Hess and Linda Darling-Hammond, “How to Rescue Education Reform,”
www.cqresearcher.com
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Alliance for Excellent Education, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.w., Suite 901, washington, DC 20036; 202-828-0828; www.all4ed.org. Promotes high school transformation
to ensure preparedness of students for postsecondary education and success in life.
American Educational Research Association, 1430 K St., N.w., Suite 1200,
washington, DC 20005; 202-238-3200; www.aera.net. National research society encouraging scholarly research in efforts to improve education.
American Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th St., N.w., washington, DC 20036; 202862-5800; www.aei.org. Conservative think tank promoting school choice and accountability in education.
American Federation of Teachers, 555 New Jersey Ave., N.w., washington, DC
20001; 202-879-4400; www.aft.org. Union and AfL-CIO affiliate representing 1.5
million teachers.
America’s Promise Alliance, 1100 vermont Ave., N.w., Suite 900, washington,
DC 20005; 202-657-0600; www.americaspromise.org. Partnership that brings together
organizations helping young people in education and other fields.
Center on Education Policy, 2140 Pennsylvania Ave., N.w., Rm. 103, washington,
DC 20037; 202-994-9050; www.cep-dc.org. National advocate for public education
and more effective public schools.
Education Trust, 1250 H St., N.w., Suite 700, washington, DC 20005; 202-293-1217;
www.edtrust.org. Nonprofit that works to close the achievement gap among minorities and low-income families.
National Dropout Prevention Center, Clemson University, 209 martin St., Clemson,
SC 29631-1555; 864-656-2599; www.dropoutprevention.org. Research center that
works to increase graduation rates.
National Education Association, 1201 16th St., N.w., washington, DC 20036;
202-833-4000; www.nea.org. Nation’s largest teachers union, representing 3 million
teachers and other school employees.
The New York Times, Dec. 5, 2011, http://
tinyurl.com/lk38qv5.
61 “fact Sheets — HR5: The Student Success
Act,” U.S. House of Representatives Education
and the workforce Committee, June 6, 2013.
62 Alyson Klein, “Obama Administration to face
Hurdles on vulnerable Programs,” Education Week,
April 23, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/ngbxdpq.
63 monica Langley, “U.S. Schools Chief Arne
Duncan Labors to Straddle Political Divide,”
The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2013, http://
tinyurl.com/k8onla8.
64 “Building a GradNation,” op. cit.
65 “Are the nation’s twelfth-graders making
progress in mathematics and reading?” The Nation’s Report Card, undated, http://tinyurl.com/n29
nv37; data retrieved from U.S. Department of
Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 19922013 mathematics and Reading Assessments.
66 Allison Nielsen, “Stagnant NAEP Scores Raise
Concerns for High School Seniors,” Sunshine
State News, may 8, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/ol8u22r.
67
Stephanie Simon, “The school standards rebellion,” Politico, feb. 14, 2014, http://tinyurl.
com/nnelzwf; and Trevon milliard, “Education board lowers math test minimum passing score,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, feb. 26,
2014, http://tinyurl.com/kdk8rtd.
68 Simon, op. cit.
69 Ibid.
70 fareed Zakaria, “America’s educational failings,” The Washington Post, may 1, 2014, http://
tinyurl.com/qzgosc6.
71 “Building a Grad Nation: with High School
Graduation Rate Over 80 Percent, Nation on
Track to meet 90 Percent Goal by 2020, New
Report finds,” Straight A’s: Public Education
Policy And Progress, Alliance for Excellent
Education, vol. 14, (8), April 29, 2014,
http://tinyurl.com/p6mlgea.
72 “Education Standards and the Common
Core,” On Point with Tom Ashbrook, wBUR,
Dec. 6, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/k2dbqes.
73 “Common Core State Standards — frequently
Asked Questions,” EngageNY, undated, http://
tinyurl.com/okkwqvp.
June 13, 2014
525
Bibliography
Selected Sources
Books
Dorn, Sherman, Creating the Dropout: An Institutional
and Social History of School Failure, Praeger, 1996.
written by a longtime educator and historian, this wellresearched and readable book examines the dropout problem
in the United States and how concerns over — and efforts to
change it — have evolved from the 1800s to the modern day.
Ravitch, Diane, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public
Schools, Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
The well-known education historian and former assistant
secretary of Education under President George H. w. Bush
argues that the real crisis in American schools is not academic but rather related to efforts to privatize schools and
transform education into a profit-oriented venture.
Rumberger, Russell, Dropping Out: Why Students Drop
Out of High School and What Can Be Done About It,
Harvard University Press, 2011.
A professor of education at the Gevirtz Graduate School of
Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and
director of the California Dropout Research Project, provides
a scholarly, well-researched yet accessible examination of the
nation’s dropout crisis.
Articles
Adams, Caralee, “Challenges ahead as push continues to
improve high school graduation rate,” Education Week,
May 5, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/nlr4c2p.
Although many have applauded the recent rise in the national graduation rate, improving the rate poses challenges.
Cardoza, Kavitha, “The GED test is about to get much
harder, and much more expensive,” The Atlantic, Oct. 8,
2013, http://tinyurl.com/m8hkdua.
This excellent summary of recent changes to the GED test
explains how the changes may affect those seeking to obtain the certification.
Ferguson, Maria, “Amid the chaos of Washington lies
opportunity,” Phi Delta Kappan, April 2014, http://tiny
url.com/o7xgbdb.
The executive director of the Center on Education Policy
at George washington University, washington, D.C., examines
how congressional gridlock is holding up reauthorization of
numerous education bills.
Gallagher, Noel K., “Maine high schools revamping graduation requirements,” Portland Press Herald (Maine),
May 28, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/pjelyx2.
Officials in Portland, maine, are proposing changes to graduation requirements that are part of a statewide move to-
526
CQ Researcher
ward proficiency-based diplomas, such as mandating that
every future high school student complete an in-depth capstone project and apply to a post-secondary school or a job
certification program in order to receive a diploma.
Layton, Lyndsey, “High school graduation rates at historic high,” The Washington Post, April 28, 2014, http://
tinyurl.com/nezh2mz.
federal statistics track graduation rates.
McNeil, Michele, “Arne Duncan vows push on range of
education priorities,”Education Week, April 23, 2014, www.
edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/04/23/29secretary.h33.html.
The Education secretary explains how the Obama administration hopes to affect education policy during the remainder of his term.
Simon, Stephanie, “The school standards rebellion,” Politico, Feb. 14, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/kbprkt8.
States, some of which have objected to the Common Core
standards, are changing their own academic standards.
Reports and Studies
“Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in
Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic,” Civic Enterprises, April 2014…