With graduation season behind us, thousands of high school seniors statewide are embarking on the next chapter of their lives with a diploma in hand. But what about all those kids who didn鈥檛 graduate with their class? The kids who slipped behind or gave up altogether?

About 1 in 4 high school seniors in Washington state failed to graduate with their class last year. That amounted to about 27,000 teens who didn鈥檛 get to celebrate that milestone on time, according to Education Week鈥檚 鈥淒iplomas Count 2013, Second Chances: Turning Dropouts into Graduates.鈥� Unfortunately, it is not expected to be much different this year when all the numbers are finally tallied.

Every dropout represents a series of missed opportunities to intervene with support for that student.

Those 27,000 kids deserve better. They didn鈥檛 wake up one morning, flip a switch, and go from solid student to struggling. When a young person drops out, it鈥檚 a long process, not a moment in time. The reasons why kids drop out go much deeper than academic challenges; they are as complex and varied as the kids themselves. Poverty, language barriers, homelessness, and poor health all play a part in limiting the ability of a child to even see, much less pursue, his or her potential.

Every dropout represents a series of missed opportunities to intervene with support for that student. Who gets the failing grade when that happens? The entire community. There are a growing number of students who need help and countless opportunities for communities to embrace and surround these young people with the resources and support needed to secure a better future.

The good news is there are programs already in place quietly doing just that. Broadly known as Integrated Student Supports (ISS), these programs are a school-based method of targeting both academic and non-academic barriers to learning by identifying individual student needs and mobilizing community resources to meet them. In other words, designated staff are placed in schools to do whatever it takes to help students overcome obstacles to success so they stay in school, graduate on time, and have a chance for a brighter future.

National research firm Child Trends recently issued a report crediting the ISS approach for improving education outcomes. Key findings show that student-centered ISS programs increase student attendance and lower dropout rates, are cost-effective and yield a positive return on investment, and are more likely to be successful than interventions that focus on single factors in isolation.

We need to be doing more of this if we want to change the picture for all those kids who are dropping out.

While we applaud the Class of 2014 and encourage those coming behind them, we need to remember that this year鈥檚 commencement has 27,000 empty seats, and it will take a community to help ensure students have the support they need to fill them in 2015.

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When it comes to graduation rate, the for all Washington state school districts identifies the adjusted four-year cohort graduation rate as 77.2% for the class of 2012.

According to OSPI, the adjusted four-year cohort graduation rate is defined as the number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for the graduating class. From the beginning of 9th grade, students who are entering that grade for the first time form a cohort that is subsequently “adjusted” by adding any students who transfer into the cohort later during the 9th grade and the next three years, and subtracting any students who transfer out, emigrate to another country, or die during that same period.

Though it represents a slight increase over the previous year’s rate of 76.6%, the flip side is that 22.8% of high school students in Washington state didn’t graduate on time last year鈥攁 clear call for continued work to keep kids in school and focused on graduation.

For OSPI’s individual school district report card information, select a district from the drop-down menu in the upper left of the summary page at .

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