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One-third of the students who enter high schools in the United States drop out before they graduate, and the country now ranks only 10th in the world among economically advanced countries in its high school completion rate, concludes a report from the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service.
The report says that the situation has gotten worse over the past decade, and that not much has been done at the federal level to improve it. For instance, federal aid for second-chance programs that help dropouts return to education and training fell from $15 billion in current dollars in the late 1970s to $3 billion today, it says.
