"It still is an issue," Dr. Walden says, "but fortunately it’s less of an issue than in the past. In 1990, 20 percent of North Carolina adults were high school dropouts. Today that rate is down to 13 percent.

"So we’ve cut the percentage of people who were already out of school who are high school dropouts down considerably," he says, "however, the latest data for 2002 show that almost 6 percent of high schoolers in that year dropped out of school.

"So although that’s a relatively small number, it’s still significant. And, of course, if you multiply it by four years in high school, it can get to be very large," he adds. "So although being a high school dropout has become less of an issue, it certainly still is an issue."