Nickolaus Dent shops for groceries, cooks every meal, cleans the house and does laundry.

The 13-year-old also makes sure his mother, who has been battling HIV for most of Nickolaus’ life, is as comfortable as she can be.

But acting as the grown up is taking its toll on his education.

If schools and the nation are serious about preventing high school dropouts, they must start focusing on preschool.

That’s the message from columnist Diana Phillips in the TimesRecordNews of Wichita Falls, Texas.

She writes that American children today are less likely to have a high school diploma than their parents, a situation that isn’t found in any other developed country.

What do you do with a student who has committed an act of violence at school?

Many, if not most, schools have a zero-tolerance policy for such behavior, but one researcher said that is not the best approach to curbing the problem.

University of Virginia professor Dewey Cornell found that careful assessment and measured action is a more effective way to deal with the issue, according to an article on Futurity.com.

His study found that schools that assessed the seriousness of the school violence, instead of immediately expelling the student, more often provided counseling and parent meetings with the student, and that pupil was less likely to have long-term suspensions or transfer to another school.

Evaleen Diaz has to pass two more subject proficiency tests before the Nevada senior can graduate.

That seems simple, but the 18-year-old is due to have a baby the day after graduation, so everything has become more complicated.

When she found out she was pregnant in December, she hid it until her baby bump became too noticeable. When her parents found out, they stopped talking to her. They’ve since come to accept the fact their daughter is pregnant and are doing what they can to help her with school.

Michigan lawmakers are considering bills that would water down graduation requirements.

The state approved a new high school curriculum only six years ago, requiring more math and foreign language courses. Several legislators are now proposing bills that would take the state back to some of the weakest graduation requirements in the nation, according to an opinion article in The Detroit News.

Social promotion versus retention is a constant debate in education.

Should students be moved ahead with their classmates even if they don’t have the skill set necessary to succeed in the next year of schooling? Or should students be held back in order to obtain those skills?

A group of researchers — Jennifer N. Bornsheuer, Monica A. Polnyi, Malitta Andrews, Brenda Fore and Anthony J. Onweugbuzie —  found that students who were retained in ninth grade were more than six times less likely to graduate on time than their peers who were not retained.

Their findings were published in the article, “The Relationship Between Ninth-Grade Retention and On-Time Graduation in a Southeast Texas High School” in the Journal of At-Risk Issues.

They analyzed transcripts from a high school in southeast Texas and found that retention was one of the largest predictors of who would dropout.

Students in Maryland who are at-risk of dropping out are finding help through a mentoring program that allows them to find career paths after high school.

Future Link, a 14-week youth development program, helps kids who are aging out of foster care, been homeless, battled substance addiction, been incarcerated , been abused or are first-generation college students.

In Louisiana, lawmakers are debating whether adult education programs should be allowed to grant high school diplomas.

James Stewart, the chief executive officer of Calvary High School in Pineville, argued that his program “does not cost the state of Louisiana one dollar” but does provide a statewide benefit by educating former dropouts, according to an article in The Alexandria Town Talk.

Politicians and policy makers offer several reasons for why the dropout crisis is occurring.

They often cite self-interested teachers unions, deepening poverty rates and increasing racial segregation in schools.

But Heather Ann Thompson, an associate professor of African American Studies at Temple University, argued that the criminalization of students is at the root of the problem.
 
In her article “Criminalizing Kids: The Overlooked Reason for Failing Schools,” published in the Fall 2011 journal Dissent, she argues that classrooms have become over-policed and school systems overly punitive.

“Ultimately, these kids’ notable academic achievement does not stem from the fact that their teachers want decent pay and job security; it results from being treated day in and day out as the worst of the worst in society and being forced to learn not what analogies they might need to know for the SAT, but what rules of conduct might land them in jail,” Thompson wrote.

In Nashville, Tennessee, Metro Schools and the Simon Youth Foundation are working to open a new academy that helps students who need eight or fewer credits earn a high school diploma.

The partnership already has two academies open, and if the Metro Council approves its budget, a third one will open this August, according to MNPS at NewsChannel5.com.