Yep, that's right.  22 schools have a 40% drop out rate, including all the conventional Public High Schools in Tacoma.

22 Washington high schools labeled 'dropout factories'

 In about 7.6 percent of Washington's 290 high schools, 40 percent of the students enrolled as freshmen don't make it to their senior year.

The 22 schools in Washington that researchers call "dropout factories" are spread throughout the state, but are found mostly in poor rural and urban school districts. Every comprehensive high school in Tacoma made the list, but none in Seattle or Spokane did.

Now granted, without access to their statistics and methodology it is impossible to figure out if the numbers are slanted or falsely represented, but the fact remains that dropouts are concerning.

In Tacoma, where every comprehensive high school had a dropout rate of more than 40 percent, district officials did not respond to repeated requests for information from The Associated Press.

Oak Harbor School District spokesman Joe Hunt contested the study's method. Hunt said Oak Harbor High School apparently made the list because the way it counts the freshman class distorted the dropout rate. The school counts not only incoming students as freshmen, but also freshmen from the previous year who didn't earn enough credits to become sophomores, inflating the size of the class.

It's a fair concern, but that would be isolated to the one school, and it does not explain the nationwide trend/

A Seattle Public Schools official couldn't pinpoint why his district managed to stay off the list of "dropout factories," but he had a few ideas.

Some Seattle high schools - Rainier Beach, Cleveland and Chief Sealth high schools - have hired dropout prevention specialists, who knock on parents' doors, talks to kids and work with law enforcement to combat truancy, said Ballard High School Principal Phil Brockman, who was the district's interim high school director for six months.

Several Seattle high schools have special programs to reach out to families, such as Latino support programs at Ballard and Chief Sealth high schools and the black achievers programs at four schools.

"When you have dedicated staff … that's where we see real progress," Brockman said. He also mentioned on-campus social workers as a key to keeping some of the neediest kids in school.

But of course ultimately the blame shifts to money/

Dollars for staff seem to be the key to dropout prevention, Brockman said, and that money isn't always available or is used for other things like shrinking class sizes.

I cannot fault the programs claims for success, but the same argument about funding keeps coming up despite the fact we are spending more money they ever before. 

I still blame the unions.  Not being able to fire lousy teachers because of union intervention has always been a problem.

He said he believes student retention may get worse, not better, in the near future because of an ever-increasing problem with drug and alcohol abuse…

So maybe the war on drugs has a purpose?

But this last bit….I am of mixed opinion…

…and because 2008 is the first year students are required to pass part of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning to graduate.

About 100 students at Ballard High School are in danger of not graduating because of the WASL, said Brockman, who believes some of those kids will not stay in school despite all the ways the district is supporting them to meet the standard and get their diploma.

I am not a big fan of the WASL by any means, but having looked into it, it is not THAT hard of a standard.

The problem is that we are not teaching children the essential skills they need.  The test is not too hard, the kids are just not being taught the skills to meet it.

Or this…

Brockman said he is especially concerned about students for whom English is not their first language.

"To expect students to reach the standard in four years where everybody else has had 12 years … there's a big gap there," he said.

I see the point, but there are programs in place for that, so I am unwilling to accept that without more data. 

Now an interesting overlooked question might be how many are illegal aliens who get deported or are migratory, and whether we should be concerned about that or not…

In all, I reserve my final judgment until I research the methodology, but regardless I am concerned as all parents should be.  We are clearly not doing a good job in the public education sector, and aside from throwing more money at it, no one has any concrete ideas to fix it.

And some of the alternatives such as Vouchers, Charter Schools and Homeschooling are too often ignored or vilified by the establishment and the teachers unions who have too much to lose if the public monopoly on education is broken.