Dropout Rates

The Contra Costa Times uses a editorial, "Stem the dropout rate" on the manufactured dropout crisis to find a villain.

An ugly irony is that the emphasis on testing in schools that's accompanied the federal No Child Left Behind Law and state reforms may discourage marginal students -- those most in need of attention.

Their solution?

"Dropout rates are a symptom of what's going on in our schools. Attention and intervention must start much earlier than high school and keep students at a level of achievement that discourages leaving."

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TT -Nevermind that the Boston Globe reported that students in Massachusetts weren't dropping out because of standardized testing.

Across the state, more than 65 percent of the 2,584 high school seniors who dropped out last year passed the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.

And nevermind that dropout rates are impossible to calculate unless we had a system of tracking a child from entry into a school, through multiple transfers (the mobility rates range between 45 and 80 percent for inner-city schools) and inter-state moves, throughout the lifespan of a student.

States can estimate the rates with formulas

the state formula for the dropout rate is the number of dropouts "divided by the fall enrollment less postgraduates multiplied by 100," state Board of Education officials said.

Dropouts are freshmen through seniors who have been removed from a district roster "for any reason other than death, extended illness, graduation, transfer to another school or expulsion."

but the fact is, we don't know the rates and a study by a school called the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Social Organization of Schools, commissioned by a news agency (the Associated Press) is not cause for extra spending on schools.

It is certainly not a reason to abandon testing that is the only means we have of making schools accountable in over thirty years.

What we should focus on is turning out functional graduates who don't have to spend two years doing remedial work in college, incurring student debt on classes that will bring them them up to high school level.

Other TT coverage.