More Accurate Reporting Won't Solve Dropout Problem

This from Ed Week, Cartoon by John Trever in the Albuquerque Journal:

America is now the only country in the industrialized world where young people are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the nonpartisan Education Trust. Two numbers illustrate this serious
challenge.

25 percent: That is the alarmingly large number of American high school students who quit before earning their diplomas.

50 percent: That is the extraordinary number of minority students in United States who do not finish high school on schedule. Even schools with otherwise commendable overall graduation rates can camouflage the poor graduation rates of minority or special-needs students...

Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate, Class of 2006

Overall - 73%

African American - 59%

Asian -90%

Latino - 61%

NativeAmerican - 62%

White - 81%

...As “The Silent Epidemic,” a report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, showed, while there is no single cause for students’ dropping out, boredom and disengagement and the coursework’s perceived lack of relevance to their futures are major contributing factors...