Educators, politicians, and MTV take aim at US dropout 'epidemic'

This method is meant to counteract the tendency of some districts to overstate graduation rates by counting only the percentage of the 12th-grade class that graduates, while many students drop out before then. But some critics fault the EPERC method because it does not account for students who transfer in or out and how that affects the rate. Christopher Swanson, director of the center, says the online tool is the best information available; based on a federal database, it's the only way to compare districts across states.

Governors in all 50 states agreed to a Graduation Counts Compact in 2005, saying they would work toward reporting graduation based on the portion of ninth-graders who finish four years later. That's important, Bridgeland says, because "if you miss a year or don't finish on time, your chances of coming back [and graduating] are small." So far at least 13 states have complied, and several dozen more expect to comply by 2010.

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have also made school compulsory until age 18, and more than a dozen legislatures are considering such proposals.

But many advocates and policymakers emphasize the need for high schools to offer a more engaging experience that students see as relevant. Even without an influx of new resources, schools and communities can make a big difference for borderline students, Bridgeland says. In his report, about half the students who started missing a lot of school said they weren't ever contacted by the school to find out why. Many "longed for service-learning, internships, theme-based classes," he says. Two-thirds said they would have worked harder if more were demanded of them.

Jynell Harrison, the MTV winner, credits her family and her freshman English teacher with showing her the value of education.

"I would try to get people to appreciate that we had a free education, so why not learn?" she says, but after ninth grade even she felt "teachers didn't seem to care that much."

The summit will highlight a variety of approaches that have shown some success at improving the environment in high schools. For instance, more than 100 high schools have started or been redesigned in the past four years as part of the Early College High School Initiative. Students recruited from low-performing groups take college courses while still in high school. The ninth-graders in the schools that opened initially have graduated at a rate of 90 percent, with more than 80 percent accepted into four-year colleges.

A lawmaker in Maine recently introduced a state bill requiring all high-schoolers to fill out a college application before graduating. Students wouldn't be forced to apply, but similar moves in some schools have motivated more students to graduate.

Some of the strongest advocates for dropout reduction are civil rights groups like the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), which is pushing for a reauthorized version of No Child Left Behind that would hold schools accountable for graduation rates, not just test scores. "To this day, when you say that 50 percent of Latinos don't make it to graduation, people are still surprised by that, and I think it's time we start ... doing something about that data," says Melissa Lazarín, a senior policy analyst at NCLR.

Dire dropout rates, particularly for African-American males, are a focal point for The Black Star Project in Chicago, which promotes mentoring and school improvement nationwide. The group has distributed thousands of "contracts" to students in elementary schools and high schools, featuring stark information about the ramifications of dropping out, such as becoming more likely to go to prison.

"We wanted to put shock value in that contract – we wanted kids to look at this and say 'Wow, if I drop out, this is the life I'm gonna live?' " says executive director Phillip Jackson.

The contract gives students two choices of where to sign: One acknowledges that if they drop out, "the quality of my life and the lives of my loved ones will be dramatically decreased," and the other is an agreement to "do whatever it takes to graduate from high school...."

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