Education Dept. Proposes New Regulations on No Child Left Behind

The federal government is proposing several regulatory changes to the No Child Left Behind law, including rules requiring states to use the same method to calculate dropouts. Right now it's difficult to tell how many students drop out because each state uses a different standard, but in some major cities fewer than 35 percent of students graduate on time.

In our Reality Check report, How Black and Hispanic Families Rate Their Schools, minority parents were far more likely than whites to consider "too many students dropping out" as a serious problem in their school. Nearly half of Hispanic parents (48 percent) and 38 percent of black parents say dropouts are a "very serious" problem in local schools, compared to 18 percent of whites.