Question: What is the high school completion rate in the U.S? Take a guess. According to Eduwonk’s  Andrew Rotherham, most people would guess 90% when the real figure is closer to 70%. Ouch! Dropping out of high school is becoming an epidemic in this country – a crisis that has dramatic economic, social, and political implications.

From February through April, public broadcasters WGBH (TV) and WBUR (Radio) are teaming up to focus on the dropout crisis in Massachusetts. They have an ongoing weekly television and radio series, as well as a live one-hour joint broadcast planned for April 7. They also created a Project Dropout website, where nine different high school students at risk of dropping out have been posting video diaries throughout the school year documenting their progress. The diaries give us a unique window into the lives of these kids who talk candidly about their struggle to stay in school and to find balance in their often hectic personal lives.

Take the case of Edwin, a high school senior who should have graduated last year but, as he says, fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up getting expelled and sent to another school. He, and all the other students, talk about how important the support of family, teachers, and guidance counselors has been in helping them stay in school.

I watched the first television episode of the Project Dropout series featured on the WGBH website. The host interviewed a 17 year old teenage mother and shed some light on why kids drop out, but it was a brief segment with not much meat to it. Hopefully future episodes will delve more deeply into the issue, focus on the social ramifications of dropping out, and most importantly, on what can and should be done to deal with this ongoing problem.

takepart in learning more about national drop-out prevention programs.

(Photo: daniel shea’s flickr photostream)