To fight 'dropout factories,' school program starts young - USATODAY.com: ...For years, educators have tried — often in vain — to get more students to graduate from high school on time and boost college-going rates. But few approaches have had much success: Dropout rates in many cities approach 50%, and a few cities — including Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit, Houston and Philadelphia — graduate fewer than 45% of students. On a school-by-school basis, recent research suggests that about one in eight high schools in the USA — many of them in the nation's biggest cities — are virtual 'dropout factories' where fewer than 60% of freshmen graduate within four years.'Historically, we have never really tried to turn around chronically underperforming schools in this country,' U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of charter school advocates last month. 'Instead, we have allowed the status quo to languish in underserved communities, sometimes not just for years, but literally for decades.'
But a few educators are now taking a hard look at what happens to kids years before they get to high school, where, as it turns out, red flags appear with alarming regularity.
