By Bianca Vazquez Toness (WBUR)

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Imagine you’re a teenager from El Salvador. You don’t speak English. You enroll in high school. The school puts you in English immersion classes, four hours a day. The rest of the school day, you study math and art. After a year of this, you start taking more math, plus history and science, all in your strange, new language.

DAVID VILLANUEVA: The first year was horrible.

David Villanueva attends Chelsea High School.

VILLANUEVA: I didn’t know a lot of English. Almost nothing. It was a problem because I didn’t understand what the teachers were saying to me.

Villanueva spent the whole first year trying to understand.

VILLANUEVA: I wanted to leave school.  I say, ‘I don’t want to go to school, because English hard.’ And my teachers, they made me speak English a la fuerza. They said, ‘If you speak Spanish in the classroom, we’re going to give you detention.’

Detention for speaking Spanish is a sore issue for Villanueva and his friends, who say some teachers don’t understand the challenges of learning a new language.

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By Monica Brady-Myerov (WBUR)

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Michaud Bates dropped out of school when he was 17, in part because of the MCAS. (Monica Brady-Myerov/WBUR)

Put your books on the floor, take out a No. 2 pencil, it’s time for the MCAS. Since Massachusetts implemented this high stakes test 15 years ago, it’s been controversial. And debate is about to flare up as changes to the rules make the English and math sections more difficult to pass. One of the central arguments is whether or not MCAS is causing kids to drop out.

In the fifth part of our radio series, WBUR’s Monica Brady-Myerov looks at the relationship between high stakes testing and dropping out.

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By Bob Oakes (WBUR)

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The debate over the MCAS exam is subject of a new documentary produced by Professor Louis Kruger, director of the School Psychology program at Northeastern University.

It’s a critical look at the high stakes test and it essentially questions whether the MCAS is meeting the goal and closing the achievement gap and preparing kids for college.

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By Bianca Vazquez Toness (WBUR)

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A justice advocacy group is calling for a review of state laws governing school discipline.

A new report by the Appleseed Center for Law and Justice says the majority of children suspended or expelled in Massachusetts are special education students.

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By Deborah Becker (WBUR)

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Dropping out of high school is a problem no matter where it happens. But it’s happening more frequently in urban than suburban school districts.

In Massachusetts cities, just 63 percent of students graduate within four years — compared to more than 81 percent statewide.

In the fourth part of our radio series, we visit New Bedford, Mass.

By Bob Oakes (WBUR)

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The Massachusetts Board of Education today takes a look at the state’s graduation rate standards.

The Commissioner of Education is asking for an increase in the minimum graduation rate for each high school. Mitchell Chester’s proposal would also require school districts to lower the dropout rate for minority groups.

A state Department of Education report shows that only half of Hispanic male students graduate from high school in four years.

Professor Ronald Ferguson directs the Achievement Initiative at Harvard University. He spoke to WBUR’s Bob Oakes about what’s causing higher drop out rates for minority students — particularly Hispanic males.

By Monica Brady-Myerov (WBUR)

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Traditionally, high schools bear the responsibility for preventing students from dropping out. But as early as third grade, educators can tell which kids are at risk.

Research shows that a student is poised for academic success or failure well before the legal dropout age of 16. Educators in many school districts are trying to figure out how to use that information to create more effective intervention programs.

In this installment in our series, “Project Dropout,” WBUR’s Monica Brady-Myerov reports on early signs of academic failure.

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By Deborah Becker (WBUR)

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Thirty years ago, someone without a high-school diploma could expect to find a job that would pay enough to at least avoid poverty. Now, that’s almost impossible.

Of the manufacturing jobs still left in this country, most pay about 30 percent less than in 1979. That has an impact on the economy, says Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum.

“It’s been a gradual thing over the last 28 years, now that the standard of living of these men without diplomas has gotten worse,” Sum says, “but since it doesn’t happen like one great shock and show in the data in one year, it’s kind of like slow rot. We ignore it because it happens gradually, but the cumulative effects are extraordinarily high.”

Those effects are especially evident in prisons. A high-school dropout is eight times more likely than a high-school graduate to end up behind bars. Sum says the average cost of keeping a male high-school dropout in prison is more than $80,000 a year.

In the second report in WBUR’s series, Project Dropout, WBUR’s Deborah Becker talks with people about not having a high-school diploma — including some who say their lack of an education helped put them behind bars.