WASHINGTON — Reforming the No Child Left Behind Act to promote higher accountability standards for the nation’s high schools, inclusive and equitable testing and culture-based curricula may help stem the wave of minority high school student dropouts and shrink the achievement gap, a panel of educators and activists said at a LULAC meeting here this week.

Every year, approximately 1.2 million students drop out of high school. The dropout rate for Hispanic students is more than 40 percent, and for Blacks it hovers at 50 percent. Underrepresented minorities, in general, have less than a 58 percent chance of graduating high school with a regular diploma. This inequality can be reversed by reforming No Child Left Behind (NCLB), education advocates say.

Policymakers, educators, civil rights leaders and activists convened this week for a town hall-styled meeting hosted by the League of United Latin Citizens (LULAC) to address NCLB policies that shortchange minority students and fail to hold high schools accountable for poor graduation rates. LULAC, a founding member of the Campaign for High School Equity, a diverse coalition of civil rights organizations committed education equality, is pressing for visible reform in the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act slated to pass sometime next year.

Currently NCLB neither ensures that graduation rates are calculated consistently or accurately nor requires the data collected to be disaggregated by race.

Panelist Holly Kuzmich, deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the Department of Education, insisted that standardized test scores in mathematics and reading have risen since the passage of NCLB in 2002, particularly among minority and special education children, but admitted the program is flawed.

“In 2002, focus on accountability was really put on elementary schools. High schools are our new focus, [especially] better reporting of graduation rates and dropout rates. There is no uniform definition of dropouts. States get to define that for themselves,” said Kuzmich. “We have proposed a set of regulations to get all states reporting on the same scale by 2013.”