Opening Doors

Keeping close track of students' progress would help more teenagers leave high school with diplomas.

“The really good news about this,” says Robert Balfanz, a research scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, “is that you can use data that’s on hand. It’s like blocking and tackling in football.”

Experts offer this advice:

Build an early-warning data system. One of the most important things states and school districts can do, Balfanz and others say, is to build a strong electronic data system that tracks individual students over time so that educators can identify when and why students start to...