- Report: U.S. makes modest gains in graduation rate, By Kimberly Hefling (AP), March 19, 2012, Chicago Sun-Times: “The last straw for 17-year-old Alton Burke was a note left on his door. The high school dropout picked up the phone and re-enrolled at South Hagerstown High. Burke missed roughly 200 days of class, but Heather Dixon, the student intervention specialist who left the note, never gave up on him. Aggressive efforts to prevent students such as Burke from dropping out contributed to a modest 3.5 percentage point increase nationally in the high school graduation rate from 2001 to 2009, according to research to be presented Monday at the Grad Nation summit in Washington. The event was organized by the children’s advocacy group America’s Promise Alliance founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The graduation rate was 75 percent in 2009, meaning 1 in 4 students fails to get a diploma in four years, researchers found. That’s well below the organization’s goal of 90 percent by 2020…”
- High school graduation rate rises in U.S., By Lyndsey Layton, March 16, 2012, Washington Post: “More high school students across the country are graduating on time but dropouts continue to be a significant national problem, creating a drag on the economy, according to a report to be issued Monday by a nonprofit group headed by former secretary of state Colin L. Powell. The national graduation rate increased to 75.5 percent in 2009, up from 72 percent in 2001. And the number of ‘dropout factories’ – high schools where at least 60 percent of students do not graduate on time – fell from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,550 in 2010…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty