Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

On the surface, a 90 percent passing rate looks pretty good.Yet, the 21,000 seniors who did not receive diplomas this spring are not the only members of the class of 2005 who failed to graduate. The number of reported graduates – 205,766 – represents only 56 percent of the number of students enrolled as ninth-graders in 2001-02.

Almost half the kids – 158,000 – did not make it to graduation.

The graduation rate in the Dallas Independent School District is even worse. Four years ago, the class of 2005 numbered 15,906 students in ninth grade. The Texas Education Agency reports that DISD enrolled 7,114 seniors this year. Of about 7,000 seniors who took TAKS, 697 failed at least one part. About 6,300 seniors graduated.

Do the math. Only 45 percent of the class made it to senior year; graduates represent only 39.6 percent of the class. Six of 10 students in DISD's class of 2005 did not receive diplomas.

This is not a "dropout rate." This is a graduation meltdown.

According to Dropouts in America, a recent collection of essays sponsored by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, 68 percent of students nationwide who enter ninth grade receive their diplomas four years later. The graduation rate for historically disadvantaged students is much lower: 50.2 percent for African-Americans and 53.2 percent for Latinos. Rates are generally lower in urban districts and districts with high poverty levels.

The graduation-rate crisis is not a new problem. DISD enrollment figures from the mid-1980s to the present show two unmistakable patterns. For almost the past 20 years, we have consistently enrolled between 12,000 and 16,000 ninth-graders. Over the same period, we have consistently graduated between 5,000 and 7,000 seniors.

We are losing over half of our ninth-graders before they reach their senior year.

The second pattern shows when we lose them: between ninth and 10th grade. Consider again this year's graduating class. DISD enrolled almost 16,000 ninth-graders in 2001-02. The next year, the district's 10th-graders numbered only 9,771 – a drop-off of almost 40 percent.

In 1986, the ninth-grade class was about 13,000; the next year, the district enrolled only 8,304 students in 10th grade.

The 1990s held to the same pattern – a huge decrease of students between ninth and 10th grade, followed by a less dramatic decline each year thereafter. Statewide, the trend is similar, but not as severe, with ninth- to 10th-grade losses in the 20 percent range. Nationally, the attrition rate between grades nine and 10 has tripled over the last 30 years.

It is common to blame the problem of school dropouts on individual students. Their values, attitudes and behaviors undoubtedly impact the process of disengagement from school that ends with dropping out.

But the sheer weight of the numbers suggests that, paraphrasing Shakespeare, the fault lies not in our students, but in our institutions. Any organization that repeatedly fails more than half of its key stakeholders ought to examine its own core ethics, structure and programs.

Can't we do better than this? Can't we create schools that inspire and engage students instead of boring and alienating them?

The locus of this crisis at the ninth grade suggests where to begin. The titanic scale of the graduation-rate crisis argues that it should be our top priority in public education.

John Fullinwider teaches at Otto M. Fridia Alternative School in Dallas.