A Plan to Cut the High School Dropout Rate

This from the New York Times:

High school graduation rates are universally seen as a barometer of success, or failure, in education. Parents, college admissions officers, even savvy real estate agents rely on that particular statistic to tell them if a school is any good.

But just as it takes a village to raise a child, graduation rates in New Jersey and elsewhere have also become a measure of the larger community outside the school and whether its politicians, civic leaders, business executives and even police officers are all doing their job as well.

Last week, Gov. Jon S. Corzine and state officials announced a yearlong, multiagency initiative to boost the state’s graduation rates. Called the New Jersey High School Graduation Campaign, it will be led not by the state’s Department of Education but by the state attorney general’s office, with funds from businesses like Verizon and Prudential, among others.

The idea is to keep young people in school not just for their own good, but also as a pre-emptive strike against violence and gang activity...