It's so great when Sam reaches out to the youth.

"Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, with painted "Asian theme" toenails, Brown said his fashion choices showed, "I am totally comfortable with who I am." He said his toenails had prompted several conversations with the kids about peer pressure and choosing one's own identity.

AmeriCorps volunteer Liz Pacholl took one 13-year-old boy on a side trip to visit his older sister who had just given birth in the maternity ward. "We couldn't find her," said Pacholl, returning after an hour. "But we used the walk over there to talk about social skills and learning life lessons."

None of the above 'facts' show anything at all to do with keeping students in school. And why do we care if they couldn't find his sister in the maternity ward WTF?

Lastly - oh boy! more lawyers!

Programs like this are great, but how about we also properly fund the schools themselves and consider reforms to make the system better able to meet the individual needs of a diverse population of students.

"Only 57 percent of Portlanders graduate from high school on time, and both Wheeler and the mayor have made doubling the graduation rate a priority by 2013."

Great! Then 114% of Portlanders will graduate from high school on time. Perhaps we can sell the surplus to neighboring states with poor graduation rates.

Chartbucker, I couldn't even finish the article after I saw that piece of mathematical wizardry. Was it by the author or taken from the Mayor's plan?

Either way, whoever did it, I wonder from where they graduated?

badly worded phrase: double graduation rate. what it actually means (and i know it's much more fun to pretend to be "ironic" and "hip" by mocking people) is that you cut the the 43% dropout rate in half. double the number of graduates among those currently dropping out.

Umm if you doubled the number of graduates among those currently dropping out, which is 0% since they are all dropping out then you would make no change. I guess when so many kids can't graduate from high school you can't expect much from ability in math from the comments section.