The dropout crisis in America is well documented. Over a million of the students who enter ninth grade each fall fail to graduate with their peers four years later. Seven thousand students drop out of school every day, a figure that corresponds to one student every twelve seconds. Of the students who fail to graduate from high school, more than half are racial or ethnic minorities.( 52)

The causes of the dropout crisis are complicated and varied. Some are beyond the direct control of individual schools, as students drop out to support their families, because of troubles with the law, or because of pregnancy. Other causes, however, are very much within the hands of education policymakers, superintendents, and principals. When students cite boring classes, a school climate not conducive to learning, or a curriculum they perceive as irrelevant to their lives as reasons for dropping out, it becomes clear that schools can be part of the solution to the dropout crisis.( 53) A range of recent research—most notably from the Building a Grad Nation movement—has detailed things education policymakers can do to move students toward graduation.( 54) That report and others focus on a range of school–related factors, including teacher quality, high student expectations, parental engagement, and an increased focus on the middle grades.( 55)

Research demonstrates that civic learning beginning in elementary and middle school, with a focus on civic responsibility, is directly tied to a student's propensity to drop out of high school.( 56) The effects of civic learning have been shown to be nearly identical to the inputs that are vital parts of keeping students in school. In particular, taking courses that require community service and participating in
student government have been found to predict high school graduation and college attendance and success.( 57) In addition to its role in giving children the knowledge and dispositions necessary for active citizenship, civic learning can serve as an important antidote to several common reasons for dropping out of school:
Classroom factors are perhaps the most obvious connections between dropouts and civic learning. Nearly half of all dropouts (47%) report that a major reason they leave school and fail to graduate is that they found their classes boring and irrelevant.( 58)

Effective civic learning infuses the classroom with both content and culture that is not only relevant to good citizenship, but also helps students stay in school. High–
quality civic learning is interactive, stimulates debate, encourages creative thinking, and immerses the students in questions of contemporary relevance. The next section of this report, which discusses proven classroom practices, will demonstrate the capacity of high–quality civic learning to offset the sense of boredom and lack of relevance that leads students to drop out.

A lack of experiential education contributes to dropout rates. Four out of five dropouts (81%) said that they would have been more likely to stay in school had the curriculum provided more opportunities for experiential learning.( 59)
The National Dropout Prevention Center has produced a list of fifteen research–backed strategies for reducing the dropout rate—strategies that the Department of Education and the National Education Goals Panel have called “the most effective strategies to help prevent school dropouts.” 60 These strategies include after–school opportunities and other nonconventional learning opportunities as tools for reducing the number of dropouts.

Effective civic learning should take many forms, many of which include experiential learning and satisfy the National Dropout Prevention Center's recommendation of engaging students outside of the classroom to lower the dropout rate. Three of the proven practices presented in the next section of this report focus on experiential education directly relevant to dropout prevention. Extracurricular activities contribute to both civic competencies and a reduced dropout rate through fostering students' involvement in the school community to give them a stake in the school as an institution. Student participation in school governance similarly gives students a stake in their schools and provides them with a skill set relevant to the professional world.

Simulations of democratic processes such as mock trials, public debates, and mock elections similarly strengthen students' connections to their communities by creating engaging and educational opportunities that both have civic implications and reduce the likelihood of dropouts who believe that education is irrelevant to the world at large.

Schools' isolation from the broader community creates a sense of alienation among students and encourages the false belief that what takes place in school is irrelevant to their communities and their later careers. Studies have found that, among at risk students, lack of engagement with the school community, in a lack of extracurricular involvement in particular—was a factor in dropping out.( 61)
The National Dropout Prevention Center has singled out both school–community collaboration and service learning that “connects meaningful community service experiences with academic learning” as vital tools in reducing the number of dropouts. Civic learning engages students in the community around them perhaps more than any other subject. When exposed to national, state, and local affairs,
students learn the importance of current events and how they can make their voice heard in democratic processes.

Service learning connected to the classroom, a vital part of civic learning, similarly serves the role of connecting students' academic work to the world around them. If there is an abandoned lot in a school's neighborhood, for example, a service project to clean it up coupled with a discussion of local government and a petition sent to the local Parks Department bridges the gap between academics and the community at large. These sorts of connections not only empower students, but also demonstrate for them the relevance of their studies to the community—a vital factor in preventing dropouts.

Civic learning avoids treating young people merely as risks to themselves and others. Defining adolescents as people in need of surveillance, assessment, and remediation communicates the idea that they have nothing important to contribute. Programs that enlist them as contributors to their communities have been found to improve their thriving or flourishing, with benefits for academic progress.( 62)

Civic learning can engage young people in addressing the barriers to success in their schools. While the reasons for dropout rates (which exceed 50 percent in some school systems) are complex, students are well placed to understand these issues and work on them effectively. Adolescents who are involved in school reform efforts or who participate on school boards and advisory committees are not only engaged in ameliorating the causes of academic failure for others, but are also learning about citizenship themselves and report that their own academic success improves as a result(. 63)

In sum, because civic learning ameliorates many of the factors that contribute to dropping out of high school, higher graduation rates are among the many benefits of civic learning. The more interactive forms of civic learning in particular, such as service learning, simulations of democratic processes, and student participation in school governance, are particularly effective at empowering students and demonstrating the relevance of their work in school to society at large. Much research remains to be done on the exact extent of civic learning's impact on
the dropout rate and the types of civic learning that have the greatest impact. Nevertheless, this much is clear: civic learning can be a vital tool to help move America's most at–risk students toward graduation.