One of the major barriers to making good on this promise is the broad set of misconceptions framing most discussions of the dropout issue. Too often, both public perception and public policy seem based on the notion that dropping out is confined to a small--and particularly unmotivated--group of young people. A related assumption, although rarely voiced, is that dropping out is primarily a problem of disaffected black and Hispanic central city youth who have rejected mainstream values, including the importance of education. Such views have reinforced a third widespread misconception: that there is little anyone can do to get most young people who leave school back on track--earning a high school degree and advancing to higher education. Making Good on a Promise challenges those beliefs. It paints a new, more accurate picture of the dropout problem facing the nation today, with a detailed look at who dropped out and how much education they had completed by their early adulthood. It analyzes data from the first major national study to follow a representative group of young people over time: the National Educational Longitudinal Study, which tracked the educational progress of approximately 25,000 eighth-graders in 1988 over 12 years, to 2000. Methodology is appended. (Contains 14 figures and 11 endnotes.)