what i learned

Over a million of the students who enter ninth grade each fall fail to graduate with their peers four years later. In fact, about seven thousand students drop out every school day. Perhaps this statistic was acceptable fifty years ago, but the era in which a high school dropout could earn a living wage has ended in the United States. Dropouts significantly diminish their chances to secure a good job and a promising future. Moreover, not only do the individuals themselves suffer, but each class of dropouts is responsible for substantial financial and social costs to the communities, states, and country in which they live.
Although graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of how schools are ultimately performing, only recently have those rates been rigorously scrutinized and the extent of the crisis in America‘s high school been revealed. For decades, schools and districts published misleading or inaccurate graduation rates, and as a result, the American public knew little of the scope and gravity of the problems faced by far too many of the nation‘s high schools. Reputable, independent research has exposed alarmingly low graduation rates that were previously hidden behind inaccurate calculations and inadequate data. There is a high school dropout crisis far beyond the imagination of most Americans, concentrated in urban schools and relegating many thousands of minority children to a life of failure. We urgently need to address this problem as a nation. Our goal in this book is to make the public aware of this issue and make improving high school graduation rates a central part of national education reform. We believe the first step must entail highlighting the severe racial disparities in high school graduation rates that exist at the school and district levels."--Gary OrfieldOnly half of our nation's minority students graduate from high school along with their peers. For many groups-Latino, black, or Native American males-graduation rates are even lower. As states hasten to institute higher standards and high-stakes tests in the effort to raise student achievement, this situation is likely to worsen, particularly among minority students. Yet this educational and civil rights crisis remains largely hidden from public view.The dropout problem is far worse than statistics indicate. Many states and districts simply do not count those students who fail to receive diplomas as dropouts. Even the hardest-hit urban districts report dropout rates of only 5-10 percent.