Dropout Rates (again)

Sounds good.

August 20, 2008 - Headline: Streicher: Drop-outs = more crime

Opening paragraph: More than 140 murders and 4,000 violent assaults in Ohio and Kentucky could be prevented if high school graduation rates were boosted by just 10 percent, a new report says.

Cincinnati Police Chief Thomas Streicher joined law enforcement officials from across the country in Washington on Wednesday to unveil the report, which shows high school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times more likely to be imprisoned.

Streicher is part of a national group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, which is calling on Congress and state lawmakers to expand and pay for pre-kindergarten programs such as Head Start.

Claim: “Research shows that children who receive quality early childhood education have a much better chance of finishing high school,” Streicher said. “By earning a diploma, they’re more likely to find good jobs and contribute to our economy, instead of our prison population.”

Claim: Nationally, more than 3,400 murders could be prevented and 172,000 crimes averted if graduation rates were increased by 10 percent, the report said.
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UP CLOSE: The group is Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
The news article does not link to the report produced by Fight Crime:Invest in Kids.
You can find it here. PDF (12 pgs.)

WE FOUND: There's only one problem. No one actually knows what the dropout rate is.

Different definitions of dropouts, different time periods during the school year when dropout data are collected, different data collection methods, different ways of tracking youth no longer in school, and different methods used by school districts and states to calculate the dropout rate, result in unreliable aggregated national dropout figures.

Nevertheless, every advocate knows there needs to be an solution to "Dropout Rates."

REALITY CHECK: No state actually tracks students from the time they enter school until they leave. Some states are planning, or have implemented in the last year, tracking systems. But currently, each state has their own formula for estimating the dropout rate.

No state tracks students after they leave the public school, so they have no information that the student did not reenter the education system at any time in another state. Or even the same state, if the student gets a GED or if the student is incarcerated and gets an equivalent diploma there, or - a larger problem - if the undocumented alien student migrates to another school under a different name.

This is why we call the Dropout Crisis an expensive non-solution to solve an unquantifiable problem, The Ideal Program for bureaucrats to administer.

From ChildTrends Databank: "incarceration rates among black male high school dropouts, which more than doubled between 1980 and 1999, thus removing them from the civilian non-institutionalized population." and "Among youth ages 16 to 24, Hispanics accounted for 41 percent of all current high school dropouts in 2005. However, they only made up 17 percent of the total youth population."

Foreign-born students had a dropout rate of 24 percent in 2005, compared with 16 percent for children born in the U.S. to foreign-born parents, both of which are higher than the national average.

ALARMING (Maybe) Look at this table. This particular study defines a dropout as "the status dropout rate which measures the percentage of young adults aged 16 to 24 who were not enrolled in a high school program and had not received a high school diploma or obtained an equivalency certificate."

So, why would you consider someone 21-24 a "dropout?" Why not call them a "non-graduate?" And how many of those young adults, many of whom aren't young, actually emigrated to this country as young adults with no diploma?

This is why quantifying the problem is so fraught with difficulties. It depends upon the agenda of the source reporting the figures.

NON-ALARMING This statistical analysis for individual states defines "dropout" as "Teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 who are not enrolled in high school and are not high school graduates," which is what most of us think of when we think of dropouts. The dropout percentages are not all that alarming. Seen as numbers, they are even less so.

The Fight Crime: Invest in Kids report depends heavily on statistical analysis by two researchers who produced a 2004 study. In an abstract of the study done by Lance Lochner (University of Western Canada) and Enrico Moretti (Univ. Of California, Berkeley), entitled, "The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports," American Economic Review, 2004" there was this:

Overall, the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about .76 percentage points for whites and 3.4 percentage points for blacks.

So whether you become alarmed or not is pretty much your choice. But bear in mind, all the solutions want taxpayer money to fund their efforts. Money - trillions of dollars - have not made public education more accountable or responsible.

Or effective.

The hope of many advocates is that they can implement newer, costlier programs, including Head Start for every child, irrespective of the fact that there is no discernible benefit to the child beyond the first three years. That way, there will be new programs in place before you find out how poorly the present education system is performing.

Many of these people are well-meaning. But, so too, were those who built a welfare system that destroyed the black family unit. So were those who spent trillions on poverty programs but reduced no poverty. And those no-fault divorces? Ask a mother of three abandoned by her husband what she thinks.

Graduation Rate in Detroit

Feb 25, 2008 - A study by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University states that just 31.9 percent of Detroit students graduate in four years. And Education Week study found fewer than a quarter of ninth-graders who entered Detroit Public Schools in 1999 graduated four years later.

The MU study found an even lower graduation rate for boys enrolled in Detroit Public Schools: just 25 percent, compared with 39 percent of girls.

Statewide, the new study found the graduation rate in 2006 -- 72.9 percent -- was significantly lower than the state Department of Education's 85.7 percent graduation rate for the class of 2006, the last year for which data is available.

State Department of Education spokeswoman Jan Ellis said Michigan this year began assigning identity codes to students, which will eventually be used to track them as they move through the educational system and on into college. But coordinating such a system with colleges will take time, she said.
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TT - Meanwhile the newest 'give-us-more-money' edu-buzz is the "graduation rates" or "dropout rates" crisis, figures that no one can calculate with any certainty without identifying individual students and following them through the system.

When students who do leave graduate are burdened by inability to read or write adequately and lack basic skills needed to find and keep a job, and colleges have to offer remedial classes to roughly 28% of all incoming students, why worry about a "graduation rate" or a "drop-out" rate? How about just a "well educated rate?

(The percentage of those needing remedial classes is 52.9% in Arkansas.)

Being blunt

LET'S BE BLUNT: The issue is total B.S.

"Dropout Factories" is a P.R. term that labeled schools identified with high dropout rates in order to gain publicity for billion-dollar expenditures to fight the problem.

It's the typical scheme of identifying a problem without quantifying it, and then proposing an expensive solution to fix something that can't be measured. That way, no one can question how and where the money was spent. This is true of Global Warming and it is true of Dropout Rates in schools.

The added bonus of such issues is that you can pat yourself on the back for "caring" even while you fork over money that actually ought to go to do something useful. In our book, that makes such people suckers, but P.T. Barnum would have been thrilled at the sheer number of those willing to defer to the judgement of others. It's not "caring. It's laziness.

For one, schools don't know what their rates are. Unless they have in place a mechanism to track the student who enters school through to graduation, they dont' know what the dropout rate is. They don't track students who move to other schools. They dont' track students who move to other states. They don't track itinerant students who may be illegals who move from school to school. They don't track those who leave school for the workplace.

Failure to graduate from a school that doesn't even begin to teach them skills they need in a workplace isn't a problem of student retention; it reflects the miserably low value of a high school degree.

And, frankly, the number of "dropouts" cited makes us wonder how many of the students were phantom students to begin with.

We've looked at it before here and here and here and here and here

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.

Dropout Rates

The first of three editorials on the dropout rate.

Nov 2, 2007 - The Virginia Pilot is planning three editorials in response to the "dropout factory" report from John Hopkins University.* This is the first of three planned editorials, and the lack of solid information isn't discouraging them one bit from urging prompt action. Something. Anything.

But neither would it be useful to spend much time dissecting or questioning the Johns Hopkins methodology. Whatever the study's shortcomings, and there are several, its underlying conclusion is sound.

The state is doing their own tracking.

In the meantime, Norfolk school officials are right not to wait for more accurate figures before acting. Whatever the dropout count, it is higher than can be tolerated.

And,

The just-released study from the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that the Virginia economy will lose $7.5 billion over time because of lost earnings from students who failed to graduate on time last June.
Once again, methodology isn't precise. But no one should doubt that the value of lost earnings is huge.

And a stirring challenge:

Until lately, school dropouts have been the hidden Achilles' heel of education reform. Now, disappearing children rightly are moving into the national spotlight. A trail-blazer in urban education, Norfolk can once again lead by confronting this challenge head-on.

TT - With sketchy information and suspect studies that are more press releases than foundations for planning? We looked at the "dropout rate" issue several times. And it's just that - the latest buzzword. States don't have mechanisms in place to count their dropouts. There is no standard defintion of a dropout. Is it someone who changed schools, districts, moved to another state? Left school altogether? How would you know they left school for another state unless you tracked them?

It's a useless exercise to talk about new policies for a problem you can't define, can't quanitify, and can never substaniate.

It sounds, however, like the best kind of program for bureaucrats to spend money on.

* The John Hopkins Unversity analsysis was commissioned by the Associated Press.

This blog isn't the only one sceptical of the dropout rate issue. A reader sent a link to Jay Mathew's column on the subject. Dropout Data Raise Questions on 2 Fronts

Dropout Rates

Oct 29, 2007 - The Las Vegas Sun on proposals to modify the No Child Left Behind Act to reduce dropout rates in schools. The story was written by an Associated Press education writer.

FACT: "Dropout Factory,*" a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America. [* The term was coined in a John Hopkins University study commissioned by the Associated Press.]

FACT: The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students.

FACT: Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages.

According to the writer, House and Senate proposals to renew the 5-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve on graduation performance, and the Bush administration supports that idea.

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The issue of Dropout Rates is the new mantra in education that will warrant new expenditures, although there is absolutely no correlation between money spent on education and academic achievement. (New Jersey schools and Washington, DC schools come to mind.]

However, there is something to be said for the desirability of tracking students and standardizing on the methods of reporting dropout rates. This is something states should have, and could have, instituted years ago if they so desired. It should not require federal funding.

The AP story does not link to a source for the dropout rates in their story. We found this source. (Be sure to view the figures as numerical as well.) At School Matters.com we found an explanation of what graduation rates mean, which will give you some idea of the confusion involved in the calculations of both dropout rates and graduation rates.

Previous TT coverage of Dropout Rates Here Here

Graduation Rates

August 2, 2007 - Vermont is proud that their state rates fourth highest in graduation rates. In an Education Trust study, called "Graduation Matters: Improving Accountability for High School Graduation," Vermont scored 86.5, meaning Vermont graduated 86.5 percent of high school students in four years.

Not all states did so well, but a few did a fantastic job - well, if you believed the state's statistics.

Overall, Mississippi ranked 48 in graduation rates. Mississippi calculates their rate as 85.00% Mississippi's graduation rate was calculated by U.S. Department of Education at 63.30%

The entire report is online. Overall, the Education Trust report criticizes the No Child Left Behind Act for not setting higher graduation rate goals.

TT - The problem with this is that there is no meaningful way of measuring graduation rates unless states establish a tracking system to follow students as they enter school and at what stage they leave. At present, state calculations are haphazard and some are outright fraudulent.

Then, too, what does a high graduation rate accomplish except high turnover? Graduation rates are meaningless if students graduate without proficiency - (proficiency may sound like an impressive accomplishment but it means at grade level.) That was one purpose of NCLB - students were being graduated without demonstrable academic achievement. Urging higher graduation rates without accomplishment means social promotion. And wasn't that the problem in the first place?

The Education Trust report also includes this (on page 2.)

But data from Indianapolis give cause for concern. The state reported a 52 percent graduation rate for the district for 2005-06, but at the same time said that 33 percent more students graduated from 12th grade that year than were actually enrolled: 969 12th-graders and 1,281 graduates. (vi) While some students surely transferred into Indianapolis during their 12th grade, it’s improbable that transferin figures were so high. The Indianapolis school community cannot
allow such dubious data to go unexplained—or unchallenged.

Indeed.

August 5 -TT - One response to the report came from Louisiana. The Education Trust report contained no data for Louisiana. Unintentionally, the story on the "missing data" confirms the uselessness of the Graduation Rate report because of lack of standardization in determining graduation rates.

Dropout Rates

June 24, 2007 - The Boston Globe reports on dropout rates in the state. In Boston, the dropout rate is 3%. The highest dropout rate in the state is in Brockton where 7% drop out. Interestingly, however, students aren't dropping out because of standardized testing.

Particularly frustrating to state Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll is the number of high school seniors giving up, even though they passed the standardized test known as MCAS, which is a statewide graduation requirement.

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. Comparable figures for the region south of Boston were not immediately available.

The best explanation was given by Stephen Sangster, principal of Rockland High School.

"The reason may be that parent investment has helped students make some real good choices," said Stephen Sangster, principal of Rockland High School, where the rate has dropped from 4.1 percent three years ago to 2.8 percent last year.

"A lot of time students decide not to continue with education because they are not finding the success they want and parents don't have the strong influence to help them bear through ."

Also see - The Annie E. Casey Foundation reports on dropout rates in all states. This interactive chart allows you to see dropout percentage rates for each state. However, percentages are less meaningful than the number of dropouts.

Child Trends databank reports that "Hispanics accounted for 40 percent of all high school dropouts in 2004. However, they only made up 17 percent of the total youth population." Graph