Special to the NNPA from TheDefendersOneline.comIn the last
decade, a coalition of public school educators, parents and
civic activists across the country have charted substantial
progress in deterring tens of thousands of students from
dropping out of high school, according to a newly-published
study.Among other things, the study showed there were 120,000
more high school graduates in 2008 than in 2001 (holding
population constant)--a result fueled by overall graduation-rate
increases in 29 states and significant graduation-rate increases
among African-American, Latino-American and Native-American
pupils.It also resulted in the closing of more than 200 "dropout
factories"--high schools that fail to graduate 40 percent or
more of their students, giving the 400,000 students who would
have attended them a better chance to earn a diploma.These
successes in pushing the national high school graduation rate
from 72 percent in 2001 to 75 percent in 2008 show that the U.S.
"is turning a corner on meeting the high sch