During the past year, we have repeatedly heard that the nation's public schools are facing a high school completion crisis. My research at the Urban Institute, for example, reveals an overall graduation rate of 68 percent. Even more troubling, there's only a fifty-fifty chance for a student from a historically disadvantaged minority group to finish, the same odds as flipping a coin (Swanson 2004). But I am not alone in this assessment. Findings from independent studies conducted at a variety of institutions—Johns Hopkins University, Boston College, the Manhattan Institute, and others—all point in a similar direction (Balfanz and Legters 2004; Greene and Foster 2003; Haney et al. 2004). Far too many of our youth, particularly poor and minority students, are failing to complete high school with a diploma.

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