Kids less likely to graduate than parents, report

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• Story Highlights
• One in four kids is dropping out of school, according to Education Trust
• Schools must meet graduation targets each year as part of No Child Left Behind
• Schools must meet targets, but the government lets each state set its own goal

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and
most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy
group.

More than half the states have graduation targets that don't improve schools, an advocacy group's report
says.

More than half the states have graduation targets that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust
says in a report released Thursday.
The numbers are dismal: One in four kids is dropping out of school, a rate that hasn't budged for at
least five years.
"The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash,
author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and poor children. "And
that is going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to compete," she said.
In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than
their parents to earn a diploma, the report said, citing data compiled by the international Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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• Education Trust
High schools are required to meet graduation targets every year as part of the 2002 federal No Child
Left Behind law.
But those targets are set by states, not by the federal government. And most states allow schools to
graduate low percentages of students by saying that any progress, or even the status quo in some cases,
is acceptable.
-- In North Carolina, schools must improve by 0.1 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would
take nearly a century to raise the graduation rate, now 72 percent, to the state goal of 80 percent.
-- In Maryland, schools must improve their graduation rate by 0.01 percentage point each year. At that
rate, it would take most of a millennium for the graduation rate among African-American students, now
71 percent, to reach the state goal of 90 percent.
-- In Delaware and New Mexico, schools will never have to meet a state graduation goal as long as they
maintain the same graduation rate. Delaware's graduation rate is 76 percent; New Mexico's is 67
percent.
Why are states setting the bar so low?
Because they can, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
State and school officials are under pressure to improve test scores under the No Child Left Behind
education law or face penalties. But they got a break on graduation rates: Schools must meet annual
goals, but the government lets each state set its own goal.
"A lot of states said, `Well, we're under a lot of pressure; let's not make this too hard on ourselves,"'
Balfanz said. "They were given a loophole, and they took it."
So in North Carolina -- which has won praise for a series of innovations to keep kids in school -- the
graduation goal has not changed. Officials are coming up with a new goal but are hoping No Child Left
Behind will be rewritten to be less punitive.
"To be candid, we're waiting for NCLB to change," said June Atkinson, North Carolina's state schools
superintendent. "Those numbers do not tell the story. Our mission is that 100 percent of our students
will graduate from high school. Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do."
In Maryland, officials say their slower goal is more realistic.
"If you really want to bring about change, you have to have reachable goals that people believe they
can work toward," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy.
"By not making these numbers pie-in-the-sky, I think we have a better chance," Peiffer said.
Graduation rates take longer to improve than test scores, because a child's educational experience must
be transformed over a period of years, Peiffer said.
The U.S. was slow to realize it was facing a dropout crisis. For years, researchers reported dropouts as
the number of kids who quit school in 12th grade, failing to capture those who left high school earlier.
States and schools clouded the picture by using different methods to keep track of students who
graduated, transferred or dropped out.
Then came the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, with its requirement that states meet graduation goals.
In 2005, the nation's governors made a pact to adopt a common system of tracking graduation rates.
Now the federal government is poised to raise the bar on graduation rates. Education Secretary
Margaret Spellings is expected to issue new rules next week that will force states to use the common
tracking system and will judge schools not only on graduation rates but on the percentage of black and
Hispanic students who graduate, too.
Among minority students, more than one in three students drops out of school.
Spellings proposed the new rules earlier this year. Final rules may differ somewhat, but Spellings said
earlier that states would be required in most cases to count graduates as students who leave high school
on time and with a regular diploma.
Critics have worried that by judging test scores more heavily and graduation less so, No Child Left
Behind encouraged schools to push weak students out.
Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said the dropout problem is driven by "dropout factories,"
schools in poor communities where kids face challenges inside and outside the classroom.
He said the government could make a big dent in the dropout problem by plowing more money -- and
firm guidance on how to spend it -- into those schools.
More resources are desperately needed, said Mel Riddle, who retired in July as principle of T.C.
Williams High School in Alexandria, Va.
"The world's changed; we have to change to meet those demands," said Riddle, now an official of the
National Association of Secondary School Principals. "To think we can do it in the same way, with the
same resources, is not realistic."