Our discussions of education often start with the idea that American schools in general are failing, and suggested solutions all stem from this faulty assumption. The biggest problems with American schools happen in areas where lots of social ills outside of school influence what goes on inside schools. Now we see this news:

The Answer Sheet - Report: Number of 'dropout factories' declines

This link shows that most of our high school dropouts come from 50 large and medium-sized cities and the South--about 1700-2000 schools (there are 14,000+ high schools in the US) produce the majority of our dropouts. And that number is falling, though not fast enough to achieve the goals we've set.

Most schools do a decent job of educating students, though our system puts a lot more stress on higher education to remediate and then educate the top 1/4 to 1/3 of our students. Any discussion of American education needs to keep these facts in mind, and we need to understand that low graduation rates, violence in schools, and low standards have as much to do with the neighborhoods outside the schools as they do with anything inside them.