In the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the northwest corner of South Carolina, high schools' attempts to curb student dropouts may not match what many people picture when they hear talk of the nation's "dropout factories." Yet one-fifth of the 2,000 high schools nationwide categorized that way by researchers at Johns Hopkins…

Springboard Schools, originally called the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, were founded in 1995 in response to the Annenberg Challenge--a five-year effort to improve nine urban school districts financed by the philanthropist, ambassador, and publisher Walter H. Annenberg. In 2003, the group, headed by Executive Director Merrill Vargo,…