The Campaign For The Grad Nation

Yesterday in Washington, D.C., America’s Promise Alliance, an education group founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife, Alma, announced a 10-year campaign to mobilize the U.S. in efforts to combat the dropout crisis.

The stated goal is to ensure that 90 percent of today’s fourth-graders, and all those younger, graduate from high school on time.

President Obama helped kick off the announcement by calling the systemic problem a pressing economic and social imperative.

“This is a problem we cannot afford to accept and we cannot afford to ignore,” Obama said. “The stakes are too high — for our children, for our economy and for our country.”

Right now, only 70 percent of American youth graduate from high school and half of the dropouts come from just 12 percent of the nation’s high schools. That’s why this initiative is giving unprecedented focus to those schools and the administration is proposing to replace low-performing schools with charter schools as a dropout prevention strategy.

He also specifically addressed the mass firing of Rhode Island teachers that touched off a firestorm last week. “If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability,” he said.

To learn more about America’s Promise and the Grad Nation program, please click here.