Last year, about 27,000 Maryland high school students dropped out of school before graduating. That was nearly a quarter of the state's Class of 2007, and Marylanders pay dearly for it. A study by the Maryland Public Policy Institute estimates that each class of high school dropouts costs the state about $50 million every year in lost tax revenues, higher Medicaid costs and the expenses of incarceration - dropouts are twice as likely as graduates to spend time in jail. Kids who drop out shortchange not only their own chances for success but also those of everyone around them.

That's why Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso has ordered high school principals to make every effort to get students who have dropped out back into the classroom. Baltimore's dropout rate, which has been estimated at between 40 percent and 60 percent, is among the highest in the state. More than 900 students have dropped out so far this year. There's no way a school system can ignore those numbers and call itself successful.

Mr. Alonso wants principals to track down every student who has left school and contact him or her at least three times, by phone or through personal visits, to try and lure the student back. That's a tough assignment for administrators whose hands during the first month of classes are already full just managing the students they have; in some schools, as many as a 100 kids have gone missing. But nobody ever said the kinds of changes Baltimore needs would come easy.

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick worries the attention devoted to cajoling dropouts to return to class will undercut the needs of students who are making the effort to show up. It's a legitimate concern because no one wants to jeopardize the hard-won gains that already have been made.

Yet there's also no question the dropout problem must be addressed, and forcefully: Allowing more than half the city's students to drop out before graduation by itself negates any chance of progress on everything from poverty and unemployment to public health and safety. Somebody had to point out this obvious fact, and to his credit, Mr. Alonso had the guts to do so. Attending to kids currently enrolled and to the dropouts who might be persuaded to return will be a tricky balancing act, and possibly the toughest challenge the schools face in the near term. But the effort must be made. Baltimore simply can't afford to keep writing off an entire generation of young people year after year.

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