School Success RESOURCES

The following article is from the  OSU EXTENSION URBAN PROGRAMS UPDATE
-- September 2007

 Archives of previous updates at: http://woostercenter.osu.edu/joe/extension-urban-program-updates

Graduation Rates:

A million students who start ninth grade each year will not earn a diploma four years later.  That’s one of every four students.  For African American and Latino students, it’s closer to one in three. 

Daria Hall of Education Matters writes about the importance of good public policy to improve both graduation rates, the quality of academic achievement, and especially of addressing educational inequalities for minorities.  She stresses that schools are not making adequate progress unless they are addressing all these issues.  She notes that accurate data is not easy to come by and holding schools to meaningful accountability is not necessarily easy.  She stresses that “States must work to identify potential dropouts, build capacity for support and intervention through state and local education agencies as well as through external partners, and develop a proactive agenda for creating new schools where persistent failure has endured for years.”

Her report gives examples of programs and policies that are making a difference. 

Find the entire report, Graduation Matters; Improving Accountability for High School Graduation, The Education Trust, 2007, Daria Hall, online at:  www.edtrust.org