Civic Marshall Plan to Build a Grad Nation
In 2009, President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called for 90 percent of U.S. students to graduate from high school and complete at least one year of post-secondary education or training by 2020. We share that national goal, but the current rate of progress is too slow. To reach these national goals, America needs to increase its national graduation rate an average of 1.5 percentage points per year over the next decade.
Just as Secretary of State George C. Marshall launched a plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, we must transform our schools. We are launching a “Civic Marshall Plan,” comprising policymakers, educators, business leaders, community allies, parents and students to address the dropout epidemic by focusing on the dropout factory high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools. If we’re to succeed, our plan must be community-based and locally organized, but also have support at the state and national levels – with guiding research, evidence-based strategies, annual benchmarks to measure success and above all, accountability.
The Civic Marshall Plan outlines the benchmarks to ensure the attainment of our goals, and focuses on the strategic deployment of human resources to help school districts and states accelerate improvement. More detail is contained within the report.
All of us, including educators, administrators, parents, students, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, college and university administrators and faculty, and officials in federal, state, and local governments, have a role to play in increasing high school graduation rates and college- and workforce-readiness.