Rebekah Richards

From teachers to technical support, American Academy students gave their online program high marks when surveyed by Washington State’s Digital Learning Department.

The recently released survey results show that nearly nine out of every 10 members of The American Academy’s student body — mostly dropouts and other studentsat risk of dropping out — report being satisfied with the program.

Newly released state data shows California suffers from an abysmal 18.2 percent dropout rate — and the situation is more than twice as bad in Oakland, where one in two students fails to leave high school with a diploma.

That is a failure of epic proportions.

When it comes to our nation's dropout epidemic, there is no silver bullet solution. Winning this fight is going to take a lot of good ideas from a lot of good people — and a lot of hard work on top of that.

To that end, we're pleased that San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson has offered his take. In a column in Tuesday's newspaper, Mr. Johnson called for a stronger vocational training program for Oakland's students.

A “slow-motion train wreck.”

That’s what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

You probably know that 10-year-old piece of legislation as No Child Left Behind. But we’ve noticed that, in the midst of a nationwide mutiny over the law’s provisions, many have abandoned the act’s far-more recognizable nickname.

Could that be because these educators, administrators and politicians would rather forget that, a decade into this federal exercise in education reform, they have indeed left so many children behind?

The polar positions set forth in a recent piece in The New York Times about the rise of online learning — particularly as it applies to credit recovery — go a little something like this:

"Online learning is all about the kids."

"Online learning is all about saving a buck."

The piece, by Times reporter Trip Gabriel, should be required reading for anyone who cares about education reform. It certainly highlights the entrenched positions by each side in the online learning debate.

But it might be missing something important that we've noticed about the rise of online learning: Most teachers, parents, students, administrators and other leaders have not chosen sides — and most probably will not.

Drive cautiously. 


That’s our advice to South Carolina legislators, who are considering a bill that would suspend the driver's licenses of teens who drop out of school. 


At first blush, the bill seems to make a lot of sense: Students might think twice about leaving school if they’re worried that they won’t be able to drive. And with an on-time graduation rate of 72 percent, state leaders should use whatever tools they can to encourage students to make better choices.


Problem is, most students don’t really choose to drop out of school — not in the way that one might assume.

We’ve been beating this drum for so long that our hands are raw and our ears are ringing.

But darn it, it seems like all that pounding just might be working. All of the sudden a lot of people are dancing to our beat. And we couldn’t be more excited.

The cover of the program for the 22nd annual National Dropout Prevention Network Conference featured a picture of a scrolled draft of the United States Constitution, set next to an ink pot and quill. Sure, it was a bit of a cliche for a conference held in Philadelphia, but we like what that image evokes: Education as an inalienable right for all Americans.

The principal rattled off the names of the gangs active at his school — and he did it as easily as easily as he might have recited the names of the other schools in his district.

The Low Profiles. The Hundreds. The Duece-8s. The Black Gangster Disciples. The Crips. The Bloods.

Day after day, he bravely walked the gauntlet of taunts, threats and physical attacks. And day after day, things got worse. In a science classroom, one day,  two students held Jamie Nabozny on the ground and pretended to rape him. As other students looked on, the assailants told their victim that he should enjoy what they were doing to him.