public policy

In yet another indication that North Carolina is becoming a key front in the battle to end the dropout epidemic, the Tar Heel State's own U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan is co-sponsoring a bill that would fund high school dropout prevention programs.

You’ve probably heard the old line about the Air Force having to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber, right?

Well Ithaca Public Schools Superintendent Nathan Bootz has added a new twist to that old thinking exercise.

In an op-ed published in Central Michigan’s Morning Sun, Bootz asks why the state of Michigan can afford to spend so much on its prisoners when it spends so little on its students.

In the wake of several state-wide failures to raise the dropout age from 16 to 18, some are seeing a place for a city-scaled solution. 

Boston City Councilors John Connolly and Tito Jackson have seen efforts to raise the age at which students may choose to leave school stagnate at the state capitol. Discontent to wait for state legislators to make a move, they're pushing forward locally.

California's woeful dropout rate is emerging as a key issue in the race for the state superintendent's seat.

That makes sense, of course. Nearly 40 percent of Latino and African American students fail to finish high school in California each year. The state also loses about 20 percent of its white students and 10 percent of its Asian students before graduation. 

Some prosecutors like to be thought of as “hard on crime.” The people who work in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office prefer that you think of them as “smart on crime.”