Everett School District's soaring graduation rate

THE Everett School District's work to push its graduation rate from an appallingly low 53 percent to nearly 84 percent this year offers useful lessons for battling crisis-level school dropout rates.

What Everett did is impressive. The district raised its graduation rate above the statewide average of 73 percent, and above the 75 percent national average.

They did it through small important changes, including paying attention to students who did not graduate within four years. In the past, students had to jump through hoops to re-enroll for a fifth year; now, they are automatically enrolled.

It is a simple but powerful declaration: no diploma in June, see you in September. It also underscores the value of graduating late as opposed to not graduating at all.

Everett hired coordinators to work with students at risk of dropping out of school. The district deserves credit for holding onto these quasi-social workers even as economic realities forced tough trade-offs.

A key factor in Everett's success is tracking student grades and absences as reliable indicators of how students are faring. Long before students become dropouts, they are failing classes and showing up less often. Early intervention is key.

Also worthy of praise is Everett's firm commitment to raising graduation requirements even as educators tackled the dropout rate. Critics often warn, wrongly it turns out, that raising academic expectations will exacerbate the dropout rate. But the lesson gleaned here is to raise academic expectations and work harder to help students meet them.

Everett's aggressive push offers strategies that can be applied in larger districts, including Seattle where work to boost graduation rates from the current 68 percent to 80 percent by 2013 is ongoing. President Obama should also take note of Everett in advance of a plan to tackle 2,000 schools nationwide with the highest dropout rates.