Graduate For A Better Future Act (Sen. Richard Burr)

The growing dropout rate of America’s high school students is a crisis that we have overlooked for far too long. Today 80 percent of America’s high school dropouts are concentrated in only fifteen states, and North Carolina is one of them. Surprisingly, over 30% of North Carolina’s public high school students never graduate. I believe a graduation rate of only 70% is unacceptable and represents a crisis we must address.

In response to this growing problem, I have introduced the Graduate for a Better Future Act to help public high schools across the country improve their graduation rates by giving our schools the tools and resources it needs to combat these low graduation rate numbers. The bill would establish a competitive grant program targeted at high schools and school districts with the lowest high school graduation rates, and focuses on the three R’s–rigor, relevance, and relationships to more effectively encourage these students to stay in school.  Over the past 25 years, the difference in earnings between workers with lower and higher levels of education has grown.  If someone doesn’t have a high school diploma, they’ll be free to fill out a job application, but they won’t be invited in for an interview. We need to reach these kids and challenge them and keep them in school. States, districts, and schools have to get serious about the dropout epidemic by setting aggressive goals for improvement.

We must do everything in our power, at every level of government, from the Board of Education to the Department of Education to prepare our children for the 21st century and have our kids graduate on time.