Issues

Click below to access Alliance reports, issue briefs, and fact sheets, and other materials on these issues.

Accountability
If the nation is to truly meet the goal of every child a graduate, we must hold schools responsible for graduating every student with a regular diploma, particularly poor and minority students. Unfortunately, current education accountability systems virtually ignore high school graduation rates.

Achievement Gaps
Years of data have consistently demonstrated the persistent graduation gap between America's students of color and their peers. The most recent estimate shows that high school graduation rates for African American, Latino, and American Indian students hover only slightly higher than 50 percent; more than 20 percentage points lower than that of their white peers.

Adolescent Literacy
Nationally, 70 percent of 8th graders and 65 percent of 12th graders do not read at grade level. That translates into approximately 6 million struggling readers in grades seven through twelve. Improving the ability of older students to read and write proficiently must become a national priority, especially since students in the bottom quartile of achievement are twenty times more likely to drop out of school than those at the top.

Graduation Rates
Graduation is a fundamental indicator of whether or not the nation's public school system is doing what it is intended to do: enroll, engage, and educate youth to be productive members of society. Approximately 1.2 million students who enter ninth grade each year fail to graduate from high school four years later. That's 7,000 students lost each school day. And more than half of students of color are not graduating on time.

Teachers and Leaders
There is growing consensus that the single most important factor in determining a student's academic performance is the quality of his or her teacher. Even low-performing students facing barriers to learning can achieve at high standards if they are taught by effective professional teachers. Yet, every school day, nearly a thousand teachers leave the field of teaching. Why is teacher turnover so high? Teachers cite a lack of support and poor working conditions among the primary factors.

Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Currently Known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
The principles of NCLB have helped to focus the nation’s attention on the unacceptable achievement gap and the imperative of improving outcomes for all students, especially the most disadvantaged.  But the needs of high schools are barely addressed in NCLB, so federal policy does little to improve high school students’ achievement and little federal funding reaches high schools. Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as NCLB, should include an appropriate and adequate federal role in supporting middle and high school reform across the country.