DISCUSSION PAPER—DO NOT CIRCULATE Reforming High Schools to Reduce Dropout Rates

1 Improving the nation's high school graduation rate has remained an elusive goal for many years. In 1990 the nation's governors and the President of the United States adopted six national education goals, including increasing the high school graduation rate to 90 percent and eliminating the gap in high school graduation rates between minority and non-minority students by the year 2000 (U.S. Department of Education, 1990). But these goals were voluntary and best estimates suggest they did little to improve the nation's high school graduation rate. 1 Beginning in the 1990s, many states began implementing performance-based accountability systems that mandated improvements in student and school performance. Although in most accountability systems tests scores were the sole indicator of performance, increasingly states included dropout and graduation requirements. In many cases, the mandates were accompanied by rewards and sanctions that carried high stakes for both students and schools. For students, sanctions included passing a high school exit exam in order to receive a diploma. For schools, sanctions included state takeover or even dissolution. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires that all states receiving Title I funds institute an accountability system for all the public schools and districts in the state, whether or not they receive Title I funds. Although states are allowed to set content and performance standards for students, NCLB mandates performance standards for schools and imposes sanctions on all Title I schools that do not meet those performance standards. NCLB also requires that public high schools demonstrate improvement in both student achievement (test scores) and graduation rates. 1 Because of the way enrollment and graduation statistics are collected in the U.S., there are no accurate, long-term estimates of the nation's high school graduation rate (see (Swanson, 2004). Data from the U.S. Census show that the nation's high school completion rate, which includes students who earned alternative credentials (e.g., GED), remained essentially flat during the 1990s at around 85 percent (Kaufman, Alt, and Chapman, 2004, p. vi), 2 Yet NCLB and performance-based accountability systems alone are unlikely to improve the nation's high school graduation rate. First, schools can only address some of the factors that contribute to students' dropping out of school. Second, performance-based accountability systems in general, and NCLB in particular, do not provide the right mix of incentives, resources, and support to alter the will and capacity of schools and the people in them …