Sandy Addis, director of the National Dropout Prevention Center, a national nonprofit organization that provides research and guidance on the issue, said a more accurate measure on the dropout issue used by educators is the high school graduation rate.
“It’s a measure of high school completion,” he said. “But it’s not totally a high school issue.”Some students begin to disengage from education even in elementary school, he said, and others “check out” in middle school though students cannot leave education until they are in high school.