Building a Grad Nation Report
Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic
With one in four U.S. public school students dropping out of high school before graduation, America continues to face a dropout epidemic. Dropping out makes it harder for these young people to succeed in life, our economy loses hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity and our communities suffer enormous social costs. The 2012 report update of
Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic, released March 19 by the
Alliance for Excellent Education, America’s Promise Alliance,
Civic Enterprises, and the
Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, shows that the nation continues to make progress, with more than half of states increasing graduation rates.
The report also reveals that the number of "dropout factory" high schools—those graduating 60 percent or fewer students on time—decreased by 457 between 2002 and 2010, with the rate of decline accelerating since 2008. The number of “dropout factories” totaled 1,550 in 2010, down from 1,634 in 2009 and a high of 2,007 in 2002. The number declined by 84 between 2009 and 2010. As a result, 790,000 fewer students attended dropout factories in 2010 than 2002.
Key Report Findings
- The national graduation rate increased by 3.5 percentage points between 2001 and 2009 from 72 percent to 75.5 percent in 2009.
- The South and the suburbs saw the largest declines in the number of “dropout factory” schools with 410 and 171, respectively, between 2002 and 2009.
- Contrary to 2008-09, progress in towns and rural areas stalled in 2009-2010.
- The following states saw the greatest change, decreasing the number of “dropout factory” schools by more than 50 between 2002 and 2010: Texas (-122); Florida (-62); and Georgia
(-54). These states increased graduation rates during this period as well. - If each state had a graduation rate of 90 percent, 580,000 additional students would have graduated in the class of 2011, increasing the GDP by $6.6 billion and generating $1.8 billion in additional revenue as a result of increased economic activity.
Watch a clip of President Obama and General Powell discussing America’s Promise Alliance and the first Building a Grad Nation report.
Civic Marshall Plan to Build a Grad Nation
Just as Secretary of State George C. Marshall launched a plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, we must rebuild our broken school system. 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. In tune with the call from President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan earlier this year to increase the U.S. graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020, we are working to mobilize Americans to quicken the pace. To reach these national goals, the graduation rate must rise by an average of 1.5 percentage points per year over the next decade. The Civic Marshall Plan outlines the benchmarks to ensure the attainment of those goals, and focuses on the strategic deployment of human resources to help school districts and states accelerate improvement. Learn more about the Civic Marshall Plan