New Alliance Report Calls on Federal Policy to Become More Responsive to Needs of Rural High Schools

More than one fifth of the nation’s two thousand lowest-performing high schools are located in rural areas. Despite progress in overall rural educational attainment, rural high school dropout rates are still too high and college enrollment rates are too low. With more than 3.4 million American students currently attending rural high schools, these troubling outcomes are more than a “local” problem: they are a national crisis.

On February 5, the Alliance released Current Challenges and Opportunities in Preparing Rural High School Students for Success in College and Careers, a new report that is intended to give federal policymakers a detailed understanding of the challenges facing rural high schools as well as the inherent assets that rural schools bring to the national education reform debate.

It notes that current federal education policies and research tend to favor urban and suburban high schools with the largest student populations and pay too little attention to the unique needs and circumstances of rural high schools. As a result, high schools-and high school students-in too many rural communities are in trouble.

Download the complete report

Lowering High School Dropout Rate Significantly Increases Job Creation, Home Ownership, Spending and Investment Income, and Car Sales, Says New Alliance Study

As a result of a new game-changing study it released on January 12, the Alliance for Excellent Education said there was demonstrated evidence that lowering the high school dropout rate will have important positive implications for the economic vitality of the forty-five largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

The study, “The Economic Benefits from Halving the Dropout Rate: A Boom to Businesses in the Nation’s Largest Metropolitan Areas” measures on a city-by-city basis the growth in jobs, home ownership, levels of spending and investment, and car sales that will result from cutting the high school dropout rate in half.

“The report underscores the notion that the best economic stimulus package is a high school diploma,” he said. “If the U.S. is to improve its competitiveness in the global economy, it must have an education system that meets the fast-growing demand for high-level skills,” concluded Wise.

Find the results for your city or read the press release.

In State of the Union Address, President Obama Calls for ESEA Reauthorization

Saying that, "In the twenty-first century, one of the best antipoverty programs is a world-class education," President Obama called for a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in his State of the Union address on January 27.

In response, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, said, "By linking education to the economy, President Obama made clear that diplomas mean dollars. And with No Child Left Behind almost ten years old, the president made the right call to action—this year, pass ESEA without delay. A generation of students and skilled workers depend on it."

Complete transcript of the State of the Union

Read Gov. Bob Wise's complete statement or latest blog entry, "ESEA—Don't Delay."

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Find A Dropout Factory In Your State

A May 18 editorial in the New York Times calls attention to the approximately 2,000 high schools that produce more than half of the nation's dropouts and close to three-quarters of its minority dropouts.

By focusing on these "dropout factories," as they have been dubbed, the nation stands a good chance of keeping in school millions of students who would otherwise drop out, the editorial reads.

"The dropout problem is fixable. To do that, federal state and local governments must work together to remake the 'dropout factories.' That means putting public money into prevention programs that have been shown to keep children in school.

While not a graduation rate, a school’s “promoting power” is a good indicator of how well schools are educating their students. See how high schools across the country perform by going to the Promoting Power database. High schools with promoting power less than 60 percent are considered dropout factories.