America's high school graduation rate has notably improved, according to figures released last week by the National Center for Education Statistics. The "averaged freshman graduation rate" rose to 78.2 percent of public school students receiving a diploma in 2010, up from 75.5 percent the year before. In 2006, the rate was 73.4 percent, and in…

The 2013 edition of "Diplomas Count," entitled "Second Chances: Turning Dropouts into Graduates," examines dropout recovery and innovative strategies for returning to the educational fold the 1 million students who leave school without a diploma each year. "Education Week's" journalists investigate interventions that…

Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from, but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8, says a new nationwide study by researchers at Western Michigan University. With 99 charter schools…

President Barack Obama's call for every state to require school attendance until age 18 may spark a flurry of action in some statehouses, but changing attendance laws will do little by itself to drive down the nation's dropout rates, experts on the issue say. In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama said states should require…

In the first wave of funding under a revitalized high school graduation initiative, the U.S. Department of Education is betting nearly $50 million that it can help states and school districts find better ways to hang onto students who might drop out and bring back those who have disappeared without diplomas. Twenty-nine states and districts won…

Well before the idea of using data to manage schools gained prominence on the national stage, Oklahoma's Western Heights school district had made the ideal of real-time, data-driven decisionmaking a reality. Back in 2001, Superintendent Joe Kitchens was already being spotlighted for his focus on creating a longitudinal-data system that would give…

Every year, "Diplomas Count" takes a careful look at nationwide trends related to high graduation. This year, they have titled their report "Graduation by the Numbers--Putting Data to Work for Student Success." This year's research shows that today's graduation climate is a tough one, particularly for minority students and…

When Superintendent Anthony Amato arrived in Stockton, California's 38,000-student district, he knew that three of its four comprehensive high schools had been labeled "dropout factories." Mr. Amato, who has led the Hartford, Connecticut, Kansas City, Missouri, and New Orleans districts, studied Stockton's data to form his plan. Then he…

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed legislation this month promoting the growth of virtual schools. The new law requires the state to develop policies for approving and monitoring a wide array of private and nonprofit online education providers. The legislative action in Virginia is the most recent major policy move by a state to expand the…

School leaders in Baltimore have mounted an offensive over the past three years to keep more students in school and on track. Last month, news came that the effort has produced a welcome dividend: Black male students are driving a marked increase in the district's graduation rate and a decrease in its dropout rate, and showing improvement at a…

At a time when many states are ratcheting up their high school graduation requirements, critics say Louisiana's new "career diploma" appears to represent a lowering of standards and expectations for students who are not headed to a four-year college. But some state education leaders who had misgivings with the legislative effort this…

Fueling the debate over high school graduation statistics, a University of Minnesota researcher is proposing a new way to gauge how states measure up when it comes to graduating students on time. But his method points to the same disappointing conclusion as other techniques to gauge school completion rates that have sprung up in recent years: In…

The numbers tell a grim story: By the time students with behavioral or emotional problems get to high school, they may be so alienated from adults or disruptive to their classmates that they simply drop out. According to a 2006 report from the U.S. Department of Education, the high school graduation rate for students identified as emotionally…

Kicked off the week of April 10, 2006 with a big plug on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," a new campaign spearheaded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is aiming to drum up public action to address what its organizers see as a crisis in America's public high schools. The Stand Up campaign comes as high schools have emerged as a focus of public-policy…

As the high-profile Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) network of schools continues to expand, KIPP leaders are taking a close look at student attrition amid arguments from critics that the loss of students at some of those public schools of choice is alarmingly high. Attrition rates at a few KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, in…