[Youth-list] Youth Data Issue: Counting Drop outs

[JMRab at aol.com]

>From Today's New Haven Register. This is a huge national issue with lots of  
dueling about methodology and outcomes. It goes to the heart our educational  
investments and the capability of the State of Connecticut to field the next  
workforce.  You will recall that the new Superintendent of the Hartford  
Public Schools recently announced that he had recalculated the Hartford school  
drop out rate and found that just 29% of entering freshmen graduated.   There is 
a state-level cross-agency data effort underway, related to youth  outcomes. 
Clearly this must be on the agenda. JMG
 
     (http://www.nhregister.com/site/News.cfm?brd=1281)       03/04/2007  
State,  feds record dropouts differently   Maria  Garriga , Register Staff 
NEW HAVEN — The statistic in Mayor  John DeStefano Jr.’s 2006 inaugural 
speech sounded like an A+ on a  report card: 12 years ago the high school dropout 
rate was 30  percent. Today it has fallen to 17 percent. 
In a troubled  school system, good news like this can inspire kids and please 
 parents.

But are the numbers real?

New Haven school  officials define a dropout this way: A student who leaves 
school  during senior year.

The federal government uses a different  method: The number of students who 
start together in ninth grade  compared with the number who finish 12th.

Using the federal  government’s method, the city’s dropout rate is far from 
inspiring  or pleasing.

The National Center for Education Statistics  found that in 2005, New Haven 
had a graduation rate of 55.1 percent  — 40 percent for Hispanics, 53 percent 
for black students and 80  percent for white students.

In other words, nearly half of  New Haven students do not finish high school 
in four years, and many  do not finish at all.

Last week the National Alliance for  Excellent Education in Washington 
released graduation rates for 10  cities in Connecticut that appeared to be 
significantly lower than  the rates reported by the school districts.

New Haven was far  from alone in its reporting discrepancy. While the state 
reports an  89 percent graduation rate in 2003, federal data indicated a  
graduation rate of 77 percent for the same period. The same report  estimated a 
31.7 percent graduation rate for Hartford, which had  reported 62 percent.

"Those figures are accurate. It’s  eye-opening to us," said Charles Williams, 
director of high schools  for New Haven, of the federal data.

Superintendent of Schools  Reginald Mayo said the city follows the state 
regulations for  reporting dropouts.

School districts, including New Haven,  often calculate the dropout rate by 
determining how many members of  a class drop out their senior year, said 
school spokeswoman  Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo.

"Our latest graduation rate was  86 percent for the class of 2006, almost 
1,000. It’s a rate that’s  gotten better and better over the years," she said.

Tom  Murphy, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the  state’
s overall graduation rate for high school seniors was 91  percent in 2005 and 
defended the accuracy of the  statistic.

"You have to acknowledge that many students in the  inner city do not in fact 
drop out but enroll in adult education  programs, not necessarily night 
school. Many students who live in  poverty need to work and care for other children 
while going to  school. They are not dropouts even though they can be counted 
as  dropouts," he said.

But states follow their own formulas for  determining graduation and dropout 
rates.

"Connecticut gives  us the flexibility to not count certain students toward 
our dropout  rate," Mayo said. 

Students who transfer, move out of state,  sign up for adult education or 
join the Jobs Corps program do not  have to be counted toward the dropout rate, 
he said.

Some  education experts claim districts and states inflate graduation  rates 
by simply not reporting dropouts.

"States and schools  are notoriously bad at tracking dropout data," said 
Daria Hall, a  policy analyst for Education Trust in Washington and author of  
"Getting Honest About Grad Rates: How states play the numbers and  students 
lose," as well as a member of a National Governors  Association task force on high 
school graduation data.

"The  federal numbers are estimates, but they are the best estimates we’ve  
got," she said. "Most school district data is based on students’  ‘plans,’ 
while national data are based on census figures. Those  numbers are more 
scientific and more verified."

Hall stressed  that the dropout problem is not a Connecticut problem, but a  
national epidemic. Some experts estimate that as many as one-third  of high 
school students nationwide leave without a  diploma.

Connecticut intends to rectify the reporting problem  by assigning each 
student an individual number in 2006 — that  identifier will be used to track 
outcomes starting with the class of  2010, said Murphy, spokesman for the state 
Education  Department.

Hall pointed out that schools require dropout  students to file forms and 
declare themselves a dropout. If they do  not file the form, they may be coded as 
"transfers" and never show  up in the dropout rolls.

Students who do sign the dropout  forms must state if they plan to pursue 
alternatives to high school  education. Those who say they will also do not get 
counted as  dropouts, Hall said.

Mayo said New Haven has targeted the  problem with a dropout-prevention team 
of 15 workers and next month  will unveil another set of initiatives aimed at 
increasing  retention, he said.

"Everything we do is to geared to keep  kids in school, like magnet schools, 
small schools. We need more  support services for kids," he said. 

Bill Villano, executive  director for the Workforce Alliance in New Haven, 
argues that most  students who drop out of regular high school and sign up for 
adult  education do not finish the programs.

"They are just as  likely to drop out of adult ed as high school. Kids are 
making a  life-altering decision at a very young age. Even if they drop out to  
work to help their parents, they are setting themselves up for a  lifetime of 
near poverty," Villano said.

Villano’s nonprofit  agency, which works on developing a regional workforce, 
issues an  annual "State of the Workforce" report that follows the  problem.

The report notes that college graduates earn an  average of $1 million more 
during their careers than high school  graduates. College graduates can expect 
to earn about $2.1 million  over their lifetimes, compared with $1.2 million 
for people with  only high school diplomas. The economy has generated 1.8 
million  jobs requiring advanced degrees in the past 10 years, compared with  a 
decrease of nearly 700,000 jobs that require a high school diploma  only.

"The high school diploma is the bare minimum you need  to survive," Hall said.

 
____________________________________
Maria Garriga can be reached at _mgarriga at nhregister.com_ (mailto: 
mgarriga at nhregister.com)   or 789-5726.  

 (http://adserver1.journalregister.com/adclick.php?n=ac8ff7bb)  
(http://bannerads.zwire.com/bannerads/redirect.cfm?ADLOCATION=1&PAG=791&BRD=1281)  ©New 
Haven Register 2007 
 
 
Janice M. Gruendel, Ph.D.
Governor's Senior Advisor on Early  Childhood
Co-Chair, CT Early Childhood Education Cabinet
Senior Youth  Consultant
United Way of CT & Office for Workforce  Competitiveness
Home office: 203-481-9940
Blackberry: 203-824-4766
Mail  to: 28 Juniper Point
Branford, CT 06405

"In the  midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible 
summer."  Albert Camus
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