Graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of whether or not the nation's public school system is doing what it is intended to do: enroll, engage, and educate youth to be productive members of society. Yet, approximately 1.2 million students who enter ninth grade each year fail to graduate from high school with their peers four years later. That's 7,000 students lost each school day. And more than half of these students are from minority groups.

Nationally, about 70 percent of students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma, but few more than half of African American and Hispanic students earn diplomas within four years of entering the high school years. In many states, the "graduation gap" between white and minority students is stunning; in several cases there is a gap of as much as 40 or 50 percentage points.

While there is no single reason that students drop out, difficult transitions to high school, a deficiency in basic skills (such as the ability to read and write at grade level or near it) or a lack of engagement serve as prominent barriers to graduation. Over one third of all dropouts are lost in ninth grade. The six million secondary students who comprise the lowest 25 percent of achievement are twenty times more likely to drop out of high school than students in the top-performing quartile. "Early-warning systems" or "on-track" indicators have allowed researchers and educators to, increasingly, identify some potential dropouts and get them back on track to educational success.

Unfortunately, many students are not given the extra support they need to successfully make the transition to high school. While some students fall through the cracks in otherwise successful schools, more than half of the nation's dropouts are unlucky enough to attend one of the nation's 2,000 dropout factories - high schools that graduate less than 60 percent of their students -, . These are the chronically low-performing, under-resourced schools where the freshman class shrinks by 40 percent or more by the time the students reach their senior year.

High school dropouts face a lifetime of reduced earnings and a diminished quality of life. For example, a high school dropout's lifetime earnings are, on average, about $260,000 less than a high school graduate's. Local communities, states, and the American economy suffer from the dropout crisis as well - from lost wages, taxes, and productivity to higher costs for health care, welfare, and crime, as shown in the potential economic impacts nationally and by state.

Census projections show that the minority populations with the lowest graduation rates are poised to become half of the U.S. population by 2050. According to Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future , a Alliance issue brief, if minority students continue to receive inferior educations and leave high school without diplomas and adequate preparation for the 21st century economy, the nation's graduation rate and economic strength will both decrease further.

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