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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Twenty-four percent of Utah students are at risk of dropping out of school before receiving their high school diplomas.
That's according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, based in Washington, D-C.
Alliance President Bob Wise attributes this failure to students' inability to read at their grade level. He said such students are 20 times more likely to drop out of high school than are their highest-achieving classmates.
The group supports a national program called "Striving Readers," which tries to improve reading skills of middle and high school students.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
