The condition of America's high schools stands as a central concern among both educators and policymakers. Independent research has revealed a state of affairs in which three in ten students fail to finish high school with a diploma and in which barely half of historically disadvantaged minority students graduate. This report, a successor to…

Graduation rates have become a prominent feature in the landscape of high school reform and within the larger world of educational policy. Studies conducted over the past several years have repeatedly demonstrated that far fewer American students are completing high school with diplomas than had previously been realized. Whereas the conventional…