No "Kid"ding . . . High School Graduation and Drop Out Crisis

Did You Know? The United States' high school graduation and drop out crisis has been a hot topic in the news for the last few years. Did you know:

• Every 26 seconds, a student drops out of high school in America, adding up to 7,000 students per school day and 1.1 million students per year.
• About 15% of the nation's high schools produce close to half its dropouts.
• The St. Vrain Valley School District graduation rate for the class of 2007 was 80.4% for all students (compared to 70% in the U.S., 75% in Colorado and 88.1% in Boulder Valley School District) and 56.5% for Hispanic students.
• Poverty is the fundamental driver of low graduation rates; and behavioral factors, such as poor attendance, behavior, effort and course failure, not demographic factors, are strong predictors of dropout outcome.
• For those young people who don't graduate from high school, future prospects are dim. School disengagement may often precede teenage pregnancy and delinquency.
• Dropping out of school doesn't happen overnight. It is the final outcome of a process that often begins at age 11 or 12.
• Many students begin to fall off the graduation track at the start of adolescence such that 40-50% of eventual dropouts can be identified in 6th grade and 75% by 9th grade by looking at attendance, behavior, and course failure in math and English.
• Students with any one of these risk factors have less than a 20% chance of graduating within five years of entering ninth grade.
• Students who enter high school two or more years behind grade level in math and literacy have only a 50/50 chance of on-time promotion to the 10th.
• Ninth grade retention is a major risk factor for dropping out of high school.
• Early intervention is critical as is whole school reform that is comprehensive, systematic, and sustained and addresses attendance, behavior and course failure. America's Promise Alliance has found that children who receive at least four of the Five Promises - caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, effective education, and opportunities to help others - are much more likely than those who experience only one or zero Promises to succeed academically, socially and civically.
• AFY works to provide at-risk youth with caring adults, safe places, effective education and opportunities to help others in our efforts to help youth succeed in school and life.
  

For more information, check out the following websites:
America's Promise Alliance
Colorado Department of Education
EPE Research Center
The Graduation Gap
National Education Association
National Dropout Prevention Centers