Dropouts, Push-Outs, Walkouts: Looking at High Schools with Eyes Wide Open

ISSUE 69 | APRIL 25, 2005

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This curious owl flew over CSU-Los Angeles on March 24, eager to hear new findings on dropouts in California. Research was the main offering from the conference convener, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, headed by Professor Gary Orfield. But the real feature of the event was the energy and commitment of those present to improve conditions in those high schools that students are fleeing in significant numbers.

THE RESEARCH STORY

The numbers impressed even this crusty owl. Overall, statewide, the joint research by Christopher Swanson at the Urban Institute, and Gary Orfield, Daniel Losen and Johanna Wald of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, indicates that about only 69 percent of California's freshmen graduate four years later. But as the researchers disaggregate the findings through the prism of ethnicity and gender, the news gets worse. If you are male and African-American, the odds are 49 out of 100 that you will leave high school before graduating. If you are male and of Mexican-American, Central-American, or South-American descent, the odds are 51 out of 100. And if you go to school in Los Angeles USD, the odds worsen for Hispanic/Latino males to 40 out of 100. (See the full report. [PDF file] )

The comparative effectiveness of large districts in California to keep high school students in school varies greatly. The Urban Institute research found that Long Beach USD and San Juan USD did far better at keeping students in school through graduation than did Los Angeles USD. But this rests on a big assumption: that every district defines a students grade level in the same way.

WHO IS A TENTH GRADER? FLY IN THE OINTMENT

This curious owl flapped north to Sacramento, and then down to the California Dept. of Education, where I got some guidance from Deputy Superintendent Geno Flores on the question of data consistency and reliability. Remembering his days in Long Beach USD, Mr. Flores noted that some districts define a tenth grader as a student who was in ninth grade last year. But others define a tenth grader as a student who has already attained a minimum number of credits. So a student taking six classes in the fall semester, and who passes all six, earns 30 units of credit (old-timers, see Carnegie units). But if that student failed half his classes, he had earned only 15 units. If a struggling student does that two semesters in a row, and earns only 30 units, he is likely to be deemed a freshman when he returns to school the following year. Why? Because the school requires 210 units to graduate, and the student who has earned 30 units is not even close to being one-fourth of the way toward that goal.

BETTER RESEARCH WHEN STUDENTS ARE TRACKED

Additional research by Julie Mendoza, who is affiliated with UCLA and the UC/Accord Project, had more bad news to offer about students in Los Angeles Unified in particular. With the blessing of the districts board president, Jose Huizar, her research team used a powerful student-tracking system to build a student-by-student analysis of how high schoolers moved through the pipeline of the four levels from ninth to twelfth grades. What they found was that the vast majority of students left high school between the ninth and tenth grades, a surprising finding even to this owl. Because the student identifier system gives a precise status report of those who stay in the massive district, those students who transferred to other high schools within LAUSD were considered to have not dropped out, of course. Ms. Mendoza made a strong argument for deeper research, and stressed the urgency of implementing a statewide student tracking system.

THE HUMAN STORY: CROWDED OUT, PUSHED OUT

Seated at the table during the first panel were two people who experienced the full force of the strains and stresses of high schools in Los Angeles. Reginald Dwayne Quarker was a student at Fremont, one of the schools considered by researchers to be a dropout factory. He spoke with clarity and conviction about the hardships Fremont imposed on him as he strived toward his goal of college. His focus and discipline, and his family's support, enabled him to win admission this spring to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Parallel stories with less happy conclusions filled the Los Angeles Times. The day after the conference, reporter Duke Helfand provided a moving story of well-intentioned students who were crowded out of science classes that were overenrolled, and a student who found himself with no desk in his French class and no place to sit but the floor. Worse than crowding, the students in this story relate the misguidance offered by guidance counselors who urged them to drop academic classes in the A-G curriculum track in favor of vocational classes. (Read the story.)

One could ask whether these students are being pushed out. A teacher from Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles asked the panel whether research showed the effect of crowded high schools on students' dropout decisions. His school has an enrollment of 4,000 and was built to hold about 2,000. The term "push-out" has won a place in the vocabulary of New York City educators. Indeed, in New York City in 2003, some principals were accused of counseling students to leave, and they were later fired when the charges proved to be true. These principals were motivated less by crowding than by the numbers game. If low-scoring students left the high school, the schools average test score results would appear to rise.

IS THE PROBLEM DROPOUTS OR DROPOUT FACTORIES?

Missing entirely from this discussion are the voices of those who leave. What if they are not just wayward gang-bangers and pregnant teens? What if they are choosing to leave school so they can learn, prosper, and grow up? Jay Mathews, one of the best K-12 reporters in the U.S., first posed this question. In his column for the Washington Post, he went out on a limb that this owl now shares with him. The issue begs for researchers who are ready to proceed with eyes wide open, and without pre-drawn conclusions. If the high schools that students leave are flawed in ways that constitute educational malpractice, wouldn't it be rational for a student to leave? No one questions an adult who leaves an HMO because she can't find satisfactory medical care. In fact, that adult is praised as a wise consumer of medical services. But when we talk about student dropouts, we presume that students have made an error in judgment, that they are not acting rationally Perhaps these presumptions are wrong. To read Jay Mathews' remarkable essay, go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A7852-2003Jun3¬Found=true

Researcher Julie Mendoza called for a similar investigation. While pleased to know the status of stayers (students who remain enrolled in high school) in Los Angeles USD, she asked, "Where do the leavers go?" Indeed. And once they go elsewhere -- out of the district, out of the state, into the community colleges, jobs, or jails -- what can they tell us about how their teachers and schools discouraged learning?

This owl believes that our words betray us. My suggestion: Let's not call this phenomenon the "dropout problem." Instead, let's call it the "high school problem," and see where that takes us.

REFERENCES

School Wise Press' Virtual Library abstracts on dropouts and grad rates.

Background on the student-tracking system as the key to the improvement of California's reporting of dropouts.

The Harvard Civil Rights Project.

The Urban Institute.

Christopher Swanson of the Urban Institute on high school graduation, completion, and dropout indicators.

Christopher Swanson of the Urban Institute on who graduates in California.

Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute in an opinion column in Education Week.

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