While it’s an optimistic sign to see a decline in high school dropout rates, we tend to agree with superintendents in both Clinton City and Sampson County schools that until every student stays in school and receives a diploma there is still work to be done.

Statistics released earlier this month show that Sampson County Schools’ had 151 students drop out of school last year; in Clinton City, there were 53.

The numbers for the county schools are exactly the same as they were the year before; in the city schools, 20 more students stayed in school during 2007-08 than in 2006-07.

On the one hand, the numbers seem positive. After all, fewer students left school. But taken on its face value, that’s 204 teenagers who opted to quit their education and, quite frankly, put brakes on what could have been a very bright future.

And for what?

Likely few know the reasons. In fact, the teenagers, themselves, don’t understand their decisions or the consequences those choices will have on their lives.

But educators know and they are working diligently not just to improve the numbers but to conquer them.

It won’t be an easy task; it fact it’s one of the most daunting, but every time they keep one student in school, they are repairing a dent in education’s armor, a crack that has been there nearly as long as there have been schools.

There aren’t easy answers, and to the credit of both Dr. Gene Hales and Dr. Ethan Lenker, they don’t try to pretend there are. Instead, they talk about the progress that has been made and the battle that still lies ahead.

They also discuss ways they hope to bridge the gap, enticing more and more young people to give school another year, and then another until they find themselves walking across a stage to receive their diploma and a key to a much more successful future.

Lenker and Hales, and their respective staffs, are working diligently to initiate programs that will help keep students in school.

That work will be defined by such things as student-teacher relationships, parental responsibility and, just as importantly, student responsibility.

There are other programs, concrete ones, that begin in middle school and continue into ninth grade, showing students, as Lenker said, “the bigger picture,” but it will take them all, working in concert to impress upon young people that choices they make today will most certainly impact them for many, many years to come.

That dropout rates are declining is a sign that what educators are working to do could be making a substantial dent. But the true test will come next year and the year after that, and the year after that.

If rates continue to decline, then educators may have found the right combination to keep young people from making grave mistakes.

We hope that is the case.