At first glance, the most recent report on dropout rates for the state and Rowan-Salisbury schools might seem to offer little encouragement that educators are making headway against one of our most stubborn problems.

For Rowan-Salisbury schools, the dropout rate for grades 7-12 declined slightly, from 4.4 percent for the 1998-1999 school year, to 4.37 percent for the 1999-2000 term. The decline for the state as a whole was a little better, from 4.6 percent to 4.34 percent.

When you focus the statistics more narrowly, looking only at high school students — which is where the majority of dropouts occur — the numbers are worse: For the Rowan-Salisbury system, the dropout rate for grades 9-12 increased to 6.61 percent, from 6.43 percent. Across the state, there was a slight decline for the same group, dropping from 6.78 percent in the previous reporting period to 6.43 percent in 1999-2000.

But before we indulge in too much hand-wringing and conclude that we’re losing the battle against the dropout problem — or, at best, have reached a stalemate — we should consider what isn’t happening. Although the state ABCs program has dramatically raised performance expectations for students, through end-of-course testing and the phasing out of social promotions, we aren’t seeing a dramatic increase in dropout rates, as some have feared. In fact, this year’s largely flat dropout rates may well be a good omen. The students most likely to drop out are high school students who are struggling academically (Of Rowan-Salisbury’s 406 dropouts last year, 398 were high school students). As standards are raised, you’d expect many more of those struggling students to give up and get out.

And that’s probably what would be happening if schools weren’t doing a much better job of identifying those at-risk students and intervening earlier, and more intensely, to keep them in school. Whether it’s Smart Start, to aid preschoolers, or alternative high schools for at-risk teens, there’s evidence these programs are succeeding.

Consider also a second factor that would boost the dropout rate if intervention weren’t effective: Schools are dealing with an influx of immigrant students. Many of those students face language barriers that make learning more difficult. Because many also come from families struggling to survive economically, those in high school may face added pressures to drop out and get full-time jobs to help support their families. The relatively flat dropout rates, however, suggest that isn’t happening on a broad scale.

It would be a mistake to read too much into any single set of dropout figures. The longterm trend is what’s important as North Carolina — like many other Southern states — tries to tame a chronically high dropout rate that correlates to a host of other problems such as teen pregnancy and unemployment. Clearly, schools, parents and the community need to do more to keep kids in school. But as the state moves forward with education reform and demands more of its students, we’re seeing evidence that higher academic standards don’t need to result in higher dropout rates.