The Silent Epidemic

Momentum Builds in Movement for Change

In States

Governors of all 50 states signed NGA's Graduation Counts Compact in 2005, making an unprecedented commitment to a common method for calculating each state's high school graduation rate.
In 2006, 13 states reported their graduation rate publicly according to the Compact formula; by 2010, 39 states plan to report this rate using the Compact definition.
38 states now have the technical capacity to collect annual records on individual graduation rates and dropouts.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia require students to be enrolled in school through age 18. In the past two years, Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico and South Dakota passed legislation raising the compulsory school age. Other states, such as New Hampshire, are on the verge of passing such legislation. A total of 14 states introduced legislation raising the compulsory schooling age to 18 in the current session, and an additional 7 states introduced legislation raising the age to 17.
Many states, including Alabama, Kentucky, New York, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have held summits, forums, and listening sessions on the high school dropout issue within the past year.
Governors in 9 states spoke about graduation rates and the need to confront the dropout problem in their respective 2007 State of the State addresses.

In the Federal Government

The Administration announced new high school graduation policies consistent with recommendations in The Silent Epidemic that respond to the crisis by:

Providing better tracking of student progress to identify those who need the most support, and asking schools to report graduation rate data by racial and ethnic subgroups at the district level in 2007-8 and at the school level by 2012;
Encouraging incentives to improve both academic performance and graduation rates;
Creating the U.S. Department of Education's Dropout Prevention database for the "What Works Clearinghouse" to examine secondary school and community-based interventions designed to help students stay in school;
Requesting a doubling of support in the FY 2008 budget for statewide data systems up to $49 million a year; and
Engaging high schools and colleges in an effort to improve standards for high school coursework so that students are better prepared to succeed in college.

In Communities and Schools

Education Week's Editorial Projects in Education Research Center recently launched a new online tool that allows all Americans to find out their school district's graduation rate compared to their state and the nation, and to learn in which grades their district is losing its students.
"Kids who quit school don't just suddenly drop out; it's more of a slow fade. Typically it begins in the ninth grade, if not earlier, often when life hits a particularly nasty patch and racking up credits in class no longer seems especially compelling or plausible."

—Time, May 2007

Rural schools from Shelbyville, Indiana to the largest school district in the United States—New York City—are working to get accurate graduation rate data and enact key reforms to address the dropout epidemic. Shelbyville leaders admitted they had been ignoring a serious dropout problem: reporting a graduation rate of 90 percent, when the accurate number was closer to 75 percent. The courage and honesty of their story was the basis for a TIME Magazine Cover story. Shelbyville has since put in place strong reforms, including an alternative school, a credit recovery program, an adult advocacy/parent engagement initiative, and efforts to engage corporations in providing internships, work-study and service learning programs.
Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University released a new resource, "What Communities Can Do to End the Dropout Crisis."
The Case Foundation commissioned a major study of the effectiveness of high quality service-learning programs in helping to reduce the incidence of high school dropout. This study builds on a primary recommendation of The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts —that 81% of high school dropouts said that opportunities for real-world learning, such as service-learning, would improve students' chances of staying in high school.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $1.7 billion to support new models in more than 1,800 schools in communities across the country, which are demonstrating success in boosting student achievement, high school graduation and college-going rates. These models include:
- Communities In Schools (CIS) operates a national network of non-traditional high schools that serves students who have either dropped out or are at-risk of dropping out and helps them graduate ready for college and work success. While nearly half of low-income and minority students in the U.S. complete high school, 85 percent of CIS students earn their diplomas and two-thirds go on to some form of post-secondary education.
- In New York City, graduation rates increased to 79 percent in the first set of high schools that replaced high schools that had graduation rates ranging from 31 to 51 percent. These new schools promote more academic rigor, provide greater access to advanced courses, support students through the transition to high school, and increase course relevance to students' personal experiences and career aspirations.
- The first class of students graduated from the Early College High School Initiative, comprising 160 high schools. These schools recruit traditionally low-performing students, many below grade level, to attend high schools that require enrollment in college courses. In the inaugural class, more than 95 percent of entering ninth graders have graduated with a high school diploma, and more than 80 percent have been accepted into a four-year college. In the past four years, the initiative has started or redesigned more than 125 schools with the capacity to serve 45,000 students in 23 states.
- Several other high performing school networks are growing, such as Cristo Rey, the Met and KIPP Academies. The Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, IL has a graduation rate of 91 percent compared to less than 50 percent in the two closest high schools. Cristo Rey has 12 schools in operation with plans to open 7 more this fall. Green Dot Schools in California graduated 80 percent of the students at their two schools compared to a 47 percent graduation rate for other high schools in their home district. Green Dot has 10 schools open to date, five of which opened in the last year.
America's Promise will host summits in Houston, TX on July 14-15, 2007 and Nashville, TN on July 31-August 1, 2007 in which community leaders across the nation will receive training on how to confront the dropout crisis and to convene local dropout summits. In conjunction with this effort, Mayors across America will be sent graduation rate reports for their cities and towns and challenged to host dropout summits to increase high school graduation rates and improve college and workforce readiness among their student population.
In April 2007 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors launched Strong American Schools, a national public awareness campaign to make educational standards, effective teachers, and improved support for students key national issues.