Barely half of all Rochester
high-school students graduate on time, a disturbing fact that Superintendent
Manuel Rivera calls “unacceptable.” But contrary to public perception, that
doesn’t mean that the other students dropped out.
For the first time, the CitySchool District has tracked
students as they entered high school as ninth graders, following their progress
for four years. The district began its study in 2001, and it has now collected
data for ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. Stats on twelfth graders, students
who should be graduating in June, will be available during the summer. But a
report the district is calling “Project 2006” has already provided some surprising
results.
While 2,594 students entered 9th grade in the 2001-2002
school year, only 1,525 of them were still in a city high school by their third
year. Of the other 1,069, only 366 had completely dropped out of school: less
than 15 percent of the entering class. That’s nothing to brag about, but it’s
not out of line with national averages, particularly among urban school
districts.
Another 309 students transferred to other school systems:
192 went to other public school districts in New YorkState, 14 went to private or
parochial schools in the state, and 103 moved to other states.
Thirty-nine students graduated early; 256 entered a GED
program, and 16 left the country — most of them returning home to Puerto
Rico. Others were expelled, were jailed, or are in a youth home or
state facility.
The information is important, says Aloma Cason — the district’s IT analyst who has been working
on the project since 2002 — because the public confuses “graduation rates”
and “dropout rates.” They are not the same, says Cason, but they are almost
always used interchangeably.
“People are always saying the district’s dropout rate is so
high,” she says. “But the most illuminating thing for me was seeing that it is
actually lower than what most people think it is. If you look at that group of
1,069 students, it’s correct to say they didn’t graduate. But they are not all
dropouts.”
District officials are studying the data to try to target
help for students where and when it is needed, says Cason. In most cases, that
need occurs before they reach high school.
“The school district is always getting criticized for having
a high dropout rate, when the issue is really getting kids prepared for the
rigors of high school,” says Cason. “This is when they have their most critical
testing. Truancy and dropping out are symptoms of other problems. If you know
you aren’t going to pass the Regents exam, why show up?”
“The data is telling us that we need to get to these kids
when they are in third, fourth, and fifth grades so they will be better
prepared for ninth grade,” says Cason, “because by then it might be too late or
too hard for some of them to get through high school in four years.”
Cason also points to students who are almost impossible to
categorize: they drop out and return several times, and it’s hard track them. That,
she says, shows that at least some students struggle with the decision and
don’t really want to drop out.
Dropping out should be viewed as an evolving process,
according to a January 2004 report prepared for the district by The Children’s
Institute. It is not typically something a tenth or eleventh grader decides on
the way to school one morning. The groundwork for dropping out has been laid
years earlier.
The most important predictors of which students will drop
out: problem behavior and grade retention, says the Children’s Institute report.
For example, repeating first grade increases the risk of dropping out by 300
percent, according to the report. Students who repeat one or more grades in
both elementary and middle school are almost certain to drop out in high school;
low reading levels are sited as the single most important cause.
But dropping out is only one of the problems. Truancy, poor attendance, high suspension rates,
and behavior problems all put students at risk. Ninety-two percent of teachers surveyed
recently by the Rochester Teachers Association said that student discipline is
a major concern in their school. Nearly two-thirds said student behavior has
worsened in the last five years, and 34 percent said they had been punched,
kicked, pushed, or verbally abused by students.
In the school-district’s study of students entering ninth
grade in 2001, Cason reports by the end of the first year, 582 students — one
out of every four — had been suspended at least once. And 54 percent had
attendance rates of less than 94 percent. But one of Cason’s more troubling
discoveries: 800 of the original ninth graders had to repeat the grade. And five
of the ninth graders were 17 or 18 years old, indicating they had already
repeated three, possibly four grades.
Rochester School Board member Shirley Thompson, who has been
following Cason’s project closely, says she is concerned about the number of
students who have been expelled, are in reform school, or are incarcerated.
She’s also concerned about the large number of students who enter a GED program.
“The track record hasn’t been too good,” she says. “A lot of
students say they are going for their GED, but don’t complete the program.”
Thompson says the community must reconnect with students and
their families, and learn how to make the goal of a high school and college education
the highest priority. But the challenge, she says, is that many families are in
crisis, with adults unable to support their children.
“When you look at these numbers, we as a community of many
stakeholders need to address the challenges of having a significant portion of
the population uneducated,” she says.
Breaking down the dropout numbers: a diagram.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2006.
