Today, as Obama speaks in Detroit, the Detroit News is publishing one of my columns titled, "Stopping Dropouts Starts At Home."

To improve America's competitiveness, Obama said he wants to spend $10 billion on childhood education. This will not work, I argue, unless there is also coordinated efforts to help kids on multiple levels including strengthening the family and other intermediate institutions. Obama's team, if they want moderates to buy into increased spending, need to also discuss how tax payer's money will be spent to develop programs outside of the classroom because a child's academic success is largely affected by what happens at home and in their community life. If asked, I'd be more than happy to work in DOE to coordinate efforts to help states develop a diversified approach that does not waste tax dollars and decrease spending in the long-run. There must be more partners (churches, civic non-profits, etc.) if we hope to increase graduation rates in public schools (esp. for minorities).

Here's an excerpt from my column in the Detroit News:

More than 1.23 million high school seniors will fail to graduate in the class of 2008, according to a new study conducted by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. Now that the drama over the Democratic nominee has subsided, the presidential candidates must return to issues that threaten to hobble America in a global economy: namely, millions of future adults who are not acquiring the skill sets that will enable them to compete.

Results for the class of 2005, the most recent year available, show a national graduation rate of nearly 71 percent, an increase of about half a percentage point over the prior year. According to the report, that figure drops for historically disadvantaged groups: 58 percent for Hispanics, 55 percent for African-Americans and 51 percent for Native Americans. Males in these groups fare especially poorly.

Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Vermont lead the nation with graduation rates of more than 80 percent. The District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina lag the nation with rates under 60 percent. Michigan is practically at the national average at 70.5 percent, but ranks 48th in the country for graduating African-Americans.

What reports overlook, and the political rhetoric during the presidential campaign will miss, is that high school graduation rates are tied to a stable family life, a sense of self-efficacy and moral maturity, rather than to money spent per pupil or the number of standardized assessments given from kindergarten through grade 12.

Read the rest here at the Detroit News.

In other news, this is my last post this week. I'm off to speak at an Alliance Defense Fund conference in Phoenix for the rest of this week.

Also, remember I have a regular Wednesday rant over at World Magazine.