If the nation is to truly meet the goal of every child a graduate, we must hold schools responsible for graduating every student with a regular diploma, particularly poor and minority students. Unfortunately, current education accountability systems virtually ignore high school graduation rates. Every Student Counts: The Case for Graduation Rate Accountability summarizes such shortcomings in the No Child Left Behind Act and calls on policymakers to take action on four specific recommendations that will alleviate the unintended consequences of weak graduation rate accountability.

If all of the U.S. high school dropouts from the Class of 2008 had instead earned diplomas along with their classmates, the U.S. economy could have benefited from an additional $319 billion in wages over these students’ lifetimes. So say conservative calculations made by the Alliance for Excellent Education that were published in The High Cost of High School Dropouts: What the Nation Pays for Inadequate High Schools.

The unacceptably low graduation rates of America’s youth have been obscured for far too long by inaccurate data, misleading calculations and reporting, and flawed accountability systems. Nationally, and for each state, “Understanding High School Graduation Rates” illustrates the discrepancies in graduation rates reported by government and independent sources, examines why this is important, and describes core policy areas that are fundamental to calculating, reporting, and improving accurate graduation rates.

When the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was drafted and signed into law, little attention was paid to the unique challenges that exist in the nation’s high schools and what is best known about how to improve them. As a result, the law emerged with provisions that often neglect, or that are even at odds with, the needs of America’s millions of high school students, particularly the six million students who are most at risk of dropping out of school each year. The brief describes these design and implementation flaws and how they undermine the educational and equity promises of NCLB at the high school level. In Need of Improvement: NCLB and High Schools calls on Congress to take the opportunity during the reauthorization of the law to build on the ideals of “no child left behind” and pass legislation that will lead the nation toward “every child a graduate.”

Hidden Benefits: The Impact of High School Graduation on Household Wealth demonstrates that if high school dropouts who currently head households in the U.S. had instead earned diplomas, the nation’s economy would benefit from an additional $74 billion in wealth accumulated by families. The wealth gap between high school dropouts and high school graduates is even more severe than the better known income gap.