This report is about the one-third of our nation who do not complete high school, about the fact that this situation has gotten worse in most states during the last decade, and about the factors in students' lives that are closely associated with dropping out of school. The report identifies several approaches to increasing student retention that evaluations have shown to have positive results. The author describes the steadily declining opportunities for dropouts after they leave school declining public investment in "second-chance" programs and declining earnings in the job market, and he describes the kinds of second chance efforts that have been shown to be effective. Higher expectations for student achievement, Barton argues, need to be matched by greater efforts and success in getting students through to graduation, thereby opening doors for more educational opportunities or decent paying jobs, and when students do drop out, there needs to be a larger system of second chance opportunities for them to drop into. Appended are: (1) Estimates of High School Completion Rates by State, 1990 and 2000; and (2) Regression Analysis Used to Predict High School Completion Rates.