Graduation Coaches Pursue One Goal

A new Georgia program aims to give every high school a full-time educator dedicated to dropout prevention.

Canton, Ga.

Seated on risers in the chorus room at Cherokee High School are about a dozen students who—just two months into the school year—have already missed five days.

Their poor attendance is a red flag signaling to school officials here that those students might want to drop out. That’s why they were summoned to this meeting.

“We just want you to back up why you were not here,” Nick Zincone, the 1,800-student school’s first-ever “graduation coach,” says to the group, almost pleading with the students to provide some proof that they had acceptable...