Educators, politicians, and MTV take aim at US dropout 'epidemic'
A national summit in Washington addresses the issue, hoping to get more students to graduate.
from the May 9, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Such perspectives are also center stage in a documentary about three high-schoolerson the brink of graduating – or not. "The Dropout Chronicles" premieres May 9 on MTV in conjunction with the summit. It follows the teens as they talk with counselors, face pressure from friends who have dropped out, and struggle to earn their last credits. "It's not sugarcoated," says Ian Rowe, a vice president at MTV. "We hear from our audience that when they see stories like that ... it helps them in their own life figure out how they can best prepare to graduate from high school ready for college."
The documentary also directs young people to a website (www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/education) with resources for getting through high school graduation and thinking about college.
Pinning down realistic graduation rates is one key to finding solutions. An online color-coded interactive map will be released at the summit by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (EPERC), a nonprofit in Washington. Click on any school district and you'll get a report showing what percentage of students who start ninth grade graduate four years later, the number of students lost in each grade in between, and how the district compares with the state and the nation. (It's available May 9 at www.silentepidemic.org.)
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.
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