by Bob Belfanz and John Bridgeland
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2024 Feature
A 20-year campaign to address America’s high school dropout crisis produced unprecedented gains in graduation rates nationwide. Can lessons from this campaign help the nation cross this elusive threshold and inspire action on other social issues?
West Virginia is home to to resourceful and resilient citizens, abundant natural resources, and staggering beauty. But the Mountain State is also near the bottom in GDP, and its citizens have among the highest rates of adult depression, addiction, child poverty, income inequality, and unemployment.
Because of the state’s vast inequities, few would have predicted that it would also become an educational success story. When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) laid the foundation for a national graduation campaign by introducing educational standards testing and accountability to improve high school graduation rates in 2001, West Virginia’s graduation rate hovered just above 74 percent. By 2020, West Virginia’s graduation rate had risen to above 92 percent—the highest rate in the nation—and its graduation rate for low-income students climbed to 87 percent, the fourth highest in the nation. More than 15 years of the campaign’s efforts lifted students’ academic success across every income and demographic category.