High school dropouts are costing some $1.8 billion in lost tax revenue every year, education advocates said in a report released Monday ... Nationally, a 90 percent graduation rate would yield $1.8 billion in local, state and federal taxes based on $5.3 billion in higher wages, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The number of "dropout factory" high schools in the District has shot up in the past decade, defying state trends nationwide, according to a report released Monday ... While the list of individual dropout factory schools for 2011 was not released, independent advocacy group Alliance for Excellent Education keeps data for schools as recent as 2010.

While school officials, politicians and researchers often clash over the correct policy to reduce dropout rates, the right way to measure those figures can be just as controversial ... "We like to think of 'promoting power' as more of a check-engine light," said Jason Amos, a spokesman for the Alliance for Excellent Education.

By the time Trudon Exter walks through the metal detectors at the front doors of Brooklyn's Paul Robeson High School, he's been commuting for more than two hours ... If all of the students who dropped out of high school in 2007 had graduated, the U.S. economy would have benefited from an additional $329 billion in income over their lifetimes, according to Alliance for Excellent Education.

Many people probably don't remember when Rep. Brent Yonts, a Greenville Democrat, introduced legislation in 1998 to increase Kentucky's high school dropout age from 16 to 18 ... That's why the average annual income for a dropout is $19,540 as opposed to $27,389 for a high school graduate, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Those who think technology only promotes a sedentary lifestyle haven’t seen iPads at work in the physical education classroom at Horace Mann Middle School in Sheboygan ... The Sheboygan Area School District celebrated its technology use on Feb. 6 — the day State Superintendent Tony Evers proclaimed as Digital Learning Day — by opening school doors and inviting the public in to see digital learning in action.

A college degree offers the best guarantee that a young American will find a rewarding career and a secure middle-class life ... America's Alliance for Excellent Education, headed by former Gov. Bob Wise, adopted the idea as National Digital Learning Day.

Kevin Van Buren didn’t see the value of a diploma from Flint’s Northwestern High School when he made the decision to end his education early ... The Alliance for Excellent Education, using half of the 2010 Genesee County high school dropout population of about 2,200 students, estimates those individuals could have provided the region with $19 million in economic growth, $43 million in home sales and $1.1 in auto sales by the time they reached the midpoint of their careers.

Among the nearly 20 pupils in her Marrs Elementary School kindergarten class, Reece Bowen was the only one who had previously used Skype, the Internet video service that allows users to talk face-to-face over their computers ... The experience was new to everyone else one recent afternoon as Regina Russell's class at Marrs communicated via Skype with a sixth-grade class at Mount Vernon Junior High School, about eight miles away, for Digital Learning Day.

Tennessee’s waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law does not hold the state as accountable for high-school graduation rates as it should ... So says a report out today from the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education, which analyzed waivers from thirty-four states.