The Current State Of Knowledge On High School Dropouts

EDUCATION BRIEFING #2 JULY 2008

WHERE JACKSONVILLE STANDS The Community Foundation launched its 10-year Quality Education for All initiative in 2005, with the goals of improving the graduation rate, decreasing the dropout rate and improving academic outcomes for all Duval County public school students. Learning to Finish is the component of the initiative that is focused on dropout and graduation rates.

RESEARCH Learning to Finish began its work exploring three high schools – Terry Parker, Englewood and Forrest – and their feeder middle schools. This preliminary research indicated these schools were experiencing a significant loss of students between 9th and 10th grades, with only 50% of entering 9th graders graduating in four years (Class of 2006). To gain a deeper perspective, the Foundation has commissioned research on student transitions at all Duval County high schools over a six-year period. That research is scheduled to be completed in fall 2008 with results reported by year-end.

ACTIONS Learning to Finish has worked with one of the three test high schools to develop strategies aimed at better preparing students for the transition from 8th to 9th grade. At Terry Parker, incoming 9th graders visit the school in the spring, attend a summer bridge program, and are connected to either a student or teacher mentor. Preparing new students for the high-school environment and workload, and connecting them to supportive teachers and older students will help them stay on track during 9th grade.

C O M M U N I T Y C A PAC I T Y While The Community Foundation has organized and staffed this work to date, it also has led an effort to build a high-capacity local education foundation in Duval County that can assume long-term responsibility for sustaining dropout reform efforts. The Foundation and other local donors have raised $2 million to date to build the governance structure, executive leadership and staffing needed to build a strong local education fund that will guide education reform in Jacksonville.

THE CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ON PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS: WHO LEAVES SCHOOL AND WHY, AND HOW COMMUNITIES ARE RESPONDING From Portland, Oregon, to Boston and New York, and south to Jacksonville, communities across America are shining the spotlight on those students who drop out, or are at risk of dropping out, of high school. A changing economy coupled with the looming retirements of those in the baby-boomer generation have led community leaders to realize that they cannot afford to let large numbers of high school students – the workers of tomorrow – slip through their fingers. This shift in expectations and thoughtful new research has changed the perspective on, and understanding of, America’s “dropout crisis.” It also has changed the way some public school systems and communities respond. This brief, the second in a series provided by Quality Education for All, an initiative of The Community Foundation in Jacksonville, looks at the recent research and the ways that some communities are addressing their dropout challenges. For communities such as Jacksonville that struggle with low graduation rates and high dropout rates, understanding the current state of knowledge is critical to making wise choices for the future.

INTRODUCTION Today, it is estimated that there are 3 million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are “disconnected” from school and the workforce – they are not in school and they are not looking for a job.1 Nationwide, 30% of all students fail to finish high school in four years, and in urban school districts, the percentage jumps to 40% or higher.2 Some experts argue that the number and the proportion of non-graduates have remained virtually unchanged since 1980. The world, however, has not. A globally competitive marketplace, a knowledge-based economy and the demands of advanced technology in almost every field have raised the “knowledge-quotient” required for citizens to find jobs that will enable them to support healthy families. Those who do not have the necessary education credentials risk being left behind. Adding to the challenge is the looming retirement of millions of baby boomers. By 2010, 64 million American workers – four out of 10 – will be poised for retirement,3 creating potential employee shortages in a host of fields. “The dropout problem hurts all of society, fueling poverty, exacerbating conflicts in the community, and raising public costs for health care, housing, law enforcement and social services,” write researchers in Boston.4

In the last five years, these researchers and others have intensified their focus on that cohort of young people who have not completed – or are at risk of not completing – high school. As part of its Quality Education for All initiative, The Community Foundation offers this overview of the current state of knowledge on the dropout crisis, and insight into how some communities are responding.

W H AT H A S C H A N G E D ? Certainly, dropouts are not a recent phenomenon. In the early 1970s, the “status dropout rate” – that is, the proportion of 16- through 24-year-olds not enrolled in high school and lacking a high school credential – was well above 30%, more than 10 points higher than in 2005.5 But the economic landscape has changed dramatically since 1970. Today, a basic high-school education is, more than ever, a prerequisite for individual economic success. In the 1970s, individuals without a high-school education could find employment in manufacturing and other industries, earning wages, with benefits, sufficient to support a family. In today’s economy, many of those low-skill jobs have migrated offshore. Other jobs that formerly were low-skill now require a level of skills and knowledge once primarily provided in a college-preparatory curriculum.

“A young person today who hopes to become an automotive mechanic must be prepared to do college level math,” said Lucretia Murphy, director of youth transitions for Jobs for the Future. “There is no difference between college prep and work prep in today’s knowledge economy.” Murphy explains the evolution of attention to the dropout crisis this way: The high school reform movement of the early 1990s brought together “school” and “work” in new ways, with the recognition that the curriculum needed to be designed not just for general education purposes but to prepare students for both jobs and higher education. This push generated questions about standards – if schools are to prepare students for work, what standards does the workplace require? What do students need to know to be ready for college? Both employers and higher education weighed in, often criticizing high schools for producing graduates who could not write, compute or think critically. It was in this climate that the standards movement gained momentum, with states establishing achievement standards and the federal government requiring reports of progress toward meeting those standards. Attention focused on how many students were achieving standards and, inevitably, how many were not. High school reform focused on raising standards. With the spotlight on high schools, researchers also were able to call attention to the young people not touched by these reforms, because they were leaving high school. This research called the question on the dual agenda for high school reform: raising standards and raising the graduation rates. “High school reform traditionally has been about those who graduated,” Murphy said. “Not any more. High school reform today is about graduating more students and ensuring graduates are prepared for jobs and higher education.”

THE NEW MATH Not only are communities and states more focused on the challenge of graduating students, they are paying more attention to methods of calculating graduation and dropout rates. In 2005, the National Governors Association highlighted the need for consistent data collection and reporting methods and urged states to begin calculating a “standard four-year, adjusted cohort graduation rate.” All 50 states agreed to the proposal. Consequently, school districts now look at high school as a progression that begins in 9th grade and concludes, hopefully, four years later at the end of 12th grade. That requires calculating graduation and dropout rates from a 9th-grade baseline. It has been the use of this broader perspective, in many respects, that has yielded some of the greatest insights into how and when schools lose students.

T H E D R O P O U T ‘ PAT H ’ Historically, dropping out was thought of as an “event” – a particular point in the individual’s educational career where she or he chose to stop attending school. In fact, recent research has shown dropping out to be more of a gradual process, where the student struggles, disengages, eventually drops out, and may drop back in before dropping out again. Moreover, research shows that the factors that drive a student down this path begin early – in middle school or before. Robert Balfanz is a research scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University who has studied and written extensively on the dropout crisis in America’s schools.

“The majority of dropouts in [study] cities leave high school with few credits because they failed the majority of their classes… [Low graduation rates] are driven by students who enter high school poorly prepared for success and rarely or barely make it out of the 9th grade. They disengage from school, attend infrequently, fail too many courses to be promoted to the 10th grade, try again with no better results, and ultimately drop out of school. Our data show that 20-40% of students in these cities repeat the 9th grade but that only 10-15% of repeaters go on to graduate.” 6 This 9th-grade crisis has its roots in early adolescence, Balfanz reports. “Many students begin to fall off the graduation track at the start of adolescence. We have been able to identify over half of a major district’s future dropouts as early as the 6th grade by looking at just four variables commonly measured in schools – attendance, behavior, and course failure in math and English. Students with any one of these risk factors had less than a 20% chance of graduating within five years of entering 9th grade. “Hence, one reason that the 9th grade finishes off so many students is that many of them have already been struggling and disengaging for three years or more before entering high school.” 7 This reseach, which has been validated by others in multiple communities, is significant in the way it changes the conversation for educators and communities. Previously, the “profile” of a dropout was defined by race, ethnicity, poverty or family circumstances – factors over which educators have no influence. By identifying indicators that educators can influence – literacy, attendance, discipline – educators have new opportunities for intervention.

WHO DROPS OUT While academic and behavioral indicators may predict a student’s likelihood of dropping out, the common characteristics of those who drop out add a revealing dimension to the picture and highlight the disparities in educational opportunity. Understanding these disparities can help educators and communities identify where to focus resources. According to many researchers, poverty is closely associated with low graduation rates and high dropout rates. “There is a near perfect linear relationship between a high school’s poverty level and its tendency to lose large numbers of students between 9th and 12th grades,” reports Balfanz.8 In Boston, 55% of young dropouts were members of families earning 200% or less of the federal poverty level.9 Jobs for the Future reports that “socioeconomic status – which is based on parents’ income and education – rather than race is the key indicator for dropping out. Black and Hispanic youth are no more likely to drop out of high school than their white peers of similar family income and education.” 10 However, researchers note that minority youth are over-represented in low-income schools and, consequently, in the population of students who have dropped out. Related to this is the finding that students in large urban school districts are significantly less likely to graduate than those attending suburban community school districts. Christopher B. Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, examined the graduation rates of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the nation, looking both at the urban school districts and the suburban school districts in each metro area. He found graduation rates of 58% in the urban school

districts, compared with 75% in the nearby suburban communities. 11

THE COST OF DROPOUTS Dropping out of high school has multiple consequences for young people, their families and the communities in which they live. Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies looked at Massachusetts and found that dropouts:

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Are less likely to work and, when they work, earn less than graduates. Report poorer health and have shorter life expectancy. Are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to rely on Medicaid or Medicare. Are more likely to depend on public assistance, both cash and in-kind. Are more likely to be incarcerated. Are less likely to marry and more likely to become single parents.14

There also are gender disparities among dropouts. Research by Boston’s Youth Transitions Task Force shows that males tend to drop out more than females. In 2000, there were 111 males for every 100 females in Boston Public Schools’ 9th grades. In that same cohort of students four years later, the ratio had dropped to 79 males for every 100 females.12 That trend held across racial and ethnic groups, with black, Latino, white and Asian males all dropping out at rates higher than their female counterparts. The Boston reseachers also found that students facing unusual challenges – juvenile offenders, those requiring special education, pregnant or parenting women, or children in foster care, for example – were at greater risk of dropping out.13

Alabama and Des Moines, Iowa. (Duval County Public Schools, with 130,000 students, is smaller than systems in New York and Philadelphia but larger than those in Boston, Portland and smaller cities.) Most of these community initiatives are new, driven by research that has been conducted in the past three to five years. Consequently, outcomes, where they are available, tend to be preliminary. Nonetheless, there are lessons emerging about what helps reforms gain traction in a community, according to Lucretia Murphy.

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It is important that communities have a neutral convener – a high-capacity organization with a history of moving an agenda, that can connect multiple constituencies and play the role of catalyst.

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School systems must be fully engaged; reform cannot be driven solely from outside the system.

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That said, ownership of reform must extend beyond the school district and the superintendent; the community must share ownership.

COMMUNITY RESPONSES More than a dozen cities across the country are involved in major initiatives to address the dropout crisis in their communities. They range from metropolitan areas, such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, to smaller cities, such as Gary, Indiana, Mobile,

The word “reform” is used because it has become clear that the small, incremental, add-on dropout prevention programs of the past are not sufficiently robust to affect the situation at hand. Communities must engage in systemic approaches to dropout prevention. Two approaches that hold promise, according to Jobs for the Future, are focusing on adolescent literacy, so that students entering high school will have the fundamental skills needed to be successful; and creating smaller learning environments for high school students. Those communities that have been at this work the longest, Murphy said, are beginning to see indicators of improvement: increases in on-time promotion from 9th to 10th grade, for example. And some specific programs are beginning to show success: In New York City, for instance, over-age, under-credited students graduate from Transfer Schools at an average rate of 56%, compared with 19% if they remain in traditional schools. But prevention is only half of the picture. Communities also must work to re-engage those students who already have left school. The most promising strategies here are in those programs that make career advancement or post-secondary education the goal, rather than mere acquisition of the GED.

FOUR COMMUNITY EXPERIENCES BOSTON The Research – Too Big to Be Seen: The Invisible Dropout Crisis in Boston and America, May 2006. Findings – In the Class of 2003, only 51% of those who began 9th grade in Boston Public Schools finished four years later as BPS graduates. Actions (as of October 2007) – Reform movement led by Youth Transitions Task Force, a broad community coalition; set goal of reducing dropout rate by half; established “dropout coalitions” in high-dropout districts; supporting funding for early indicator systems, alternative pathways to graduation and outreach to dropouts. Total Public School Enrollment – 57,000. To Learn More: www.bostonpic.org

NEW YORK CITY The Research – Chance of a Lifetime, May 2006. Findings – In the Class of 2003, only 52% who entered 9th grade graduated in four years. Approximately 200,000 youths ages 16-24 in New York City are neither in school nor working. Actions (as of October 2007) – Established an Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation within the city Department of Education; established Learning to Work programs; established Transfer Schools; designed Young Adult Borough Centers for older students needing credits to graduate; set focus on younger students off track for graduation; redesigned the GED program. Total Public School Enrollment – 945,000. To Learn More: www.ydinstitute.org

PHILADELPHIA ENDNOTES 1 Chance of a Lifetime, Center for an Urban Future, May 2006 2 Cities in Crisis, Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, April 2008. 3 Chance of a Lifetime. 4 Too Big To Be Seen: The Invisible Dropout Crisis in Boston and America, May 2006. 5 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2007). A high school credential includes a high school diploma or equivalent credential such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate. 6 Balfanz, Robert and Legters, Nettie, The Graduation Rate Crisis We Know and What Can Be Done About It, Education Week Commentary, July 12, 2006. 7 Ibid 8 Ibid 9 Too Big To Be Seen.

The Research – Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia’s Dropout Crisis 2000-2005, published 2006. Findings – For the Classes of 2000-2005, the four-year graduation rate ranged from 45% to 52% and no sub-group achieved an on-time graduation rate higher than 71%. Actions (as of October 2007) – Established Project U-Turn, a citywide campaign to address dropout crisis; expanded accelerated schools serving students with few credits; developed bridge programs for students reading below 6th grade level; enhanced career technical education offerings; created one-stop re-engagement center. Total Public School Enrollment – 167,000. To Learn More: www.projectuturn.net

PORTLAND, OREGON The Research – The Fourth R, Spring 2007. Findings – Only 50% of students entering 9th grade take the traditional fouryear path to graduation. The risk of leaving school peaks in the summer and is most pronounced among those not on a traditional four-year trajectory. Actions (as of October 2007) – Created broad community coalition; established supports for off-track 8th graders transitioning to 9th grade; integrated alternative high schools into the school district. Total Public School Enrollment – 47,000. To Learn More: www.connectedby25.org

10 Making Good on a Promise: What Policymakers Can Do to Support the Educational Persistence of Dropouts. April 2006. 11 Cities in Crisis. 12 Too Big To Be Seen. 12 Ibid 14 The Fiscal Economic Consequences of Dropping Out of High School, Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies.

This report was prepared as part of The Community Foundation in Jacksonville’s Quality Education for All initiative, of which Learning to Finish is a part. It may be found at www.jaxcf.org. It was written by Mary Kress Littlepage, KBT & Associates, Jacksonville, Florida.