Dropping out is hard to do

A wave of reports the last few years has called new attention to low graduation rates among america’s high school students: Only seven in 10 ninth graders complete high school on time with a regular diploma, and among African-American and Latino students, the rate is closer to one half. last year, all 50 governors signed a compact to adopt a common measure for calculating completion rates, one much tougher than those that states have been using to measure progress under No Child left Behind.

That means America’s educators are about to be faced with a sizeable new challenge—fixing the nation’s dropout problem. and they will have to tackle that challenge even as they simultaneously work to improve student achievement...