Schools Imploding: Dropout Factories

[flashl]

Growth of 'dropout factories' a fright

Another sign that entire school districts across our nation are imploding: A just-released study by Johns Hopkins University that found 1,700 of our nation’s high schools or vocational schools are “dropout factories.”

That’s what researcher Bob Balfanz called schools where at least 60 percent of the students enrolled as freshman drop out before graduating.

== snip ==

The official suggested solution, at least at the federal level: Extend the “No Child Left Behind Act” to include more high schools, providing more federal dollars to bolster results. At the core, however, we have to believe that just perhaps it isn’t under-performing teachers or indifferent administrators or any other stereotype that’s at work here. In fact, we don’t even need a study to tell us what teachers we know who work in those big cities tell us in private, over dinner:

Too many of their students just don’t care. Too many sit for an hour with an iPod in their ears. Too many have no respect for their teachers, nor any thirst for education. If only one or two teachers said this, we might ignore it. But it is a refrain we hear often, from many different educators.

This Johns Hopkins study does not surprise us. But when we consider its implications, the chill that we feel has nothing to do with Halloween.

NCLB has accelerated the REAL school to prison pipeline. We can choose to ignore the consequences of this mass of people or act to change it.

[liberal N proud]

1. Taking America down, the bu$h plan

One job at a time, one student at a time one family at a time.

[jackster]

2. I've been trying to find the original report

from Johns Hopkins to compare the stats. I've not had any luck. Anyone have a link or information? Thanks!

[flashl]

4. Data

The link which follows provides access to the spread sheets which contain the data the AP used to formulate their tables. It includes beginning and 12th grade enrollments for the Class of 2006 and year by year promoting power rates for the Class of 2004, 2005, and 2006.

List of Schools with a Weak 3 yr Avg 2004 2005 2006V3.pdf

Average ppmean06 (2005 Sample 3 years valid data) State Distribution and Estimated DropoutsV2.pdf

[jackster]

31. THANKS!

:toast:

[mzteris]

6. is this what you're looking for?

http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home04/jun04/promote.html

http://cms.web.jhu.edu/bin/i/j/Average_ppmean06_2005_Sample_3years_valid_data_State_Distribution_and_Estimated_DropoutsV2.pdf

edit to add: http://www.csos.jhu.edu/tdhs/rsch/Locating_Dropouts.pdf



CLARIFICATION: http://web.jhu.edu/CSOS/images/AP_Dropout_Factory_Story_2.pdf

[jackster]

32. Thanks!

:toast:

[cgrindley]

3. No

NCLB is finally bringing accountability to the education system. It's a good thing. Something like it has been working in my homeland of Canada for over two decades now, and a similar system has been in the UK for nearly 50 years. Poor schools should be reorganized from top to bottom. Underperforming teachers should be fired. If a school cannot be fixed, it should be closed forever.

[flashl]

5. NCLB alleged intend sounds good but not reality of implementation

How the Federal Government Makes Rich States Richer

Goodwin Liu, Assistant Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law and co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the University of California at Berkeley, analyzed the distribution of Title I funds and shows that the program’s state allocation formula reinforces rather than reduces funding gaps between wealthy and poor states.

Liu’s analysis finds that the state expenditure factor in the Title I formula results in highly unequal allocations of federal aid per poor child. For example, Maryland has fewer poor children than Arkansas but receives 51 percent more Title I aid per poor child, even though Arkansas dedicates more of its taxable resources to education than wealthier Maryland. Similarly, Massachusetts has fewer poor children and exerts less effort against its tax base to fund education than poorer Oklahoma, but receives more than twice as much Title I aid.

In short, Title I tends to reward wealthy states that can raise funds for education with relatively little effort while shortchanging poorer states, including those that make relatively greater effort to fund education.

“Poor children are concentrated in relatively poorer states. Instead of providing relatively more help to these kids, Title I provides less,” Liu said. “If we are serious about ensuring that every child in America meets high standards, then we must develop a federal school finance policy equal to the task.”

The ONLY part of schools where there is measurable growth is in the size of its ADMINISTRATION. School consolidation formulas for savings have resulted in larger administrations while parents and teachers are burden to bring toilet paper, copy paper, markers, crayons, etc. to schools.

[cgrindley]

14. Teachers should quit moaning and focus

and perhaps Arkansas should get itself better administrators or more effective representation.

[Richard Steele]

8. So now Canada is a "homeland" too? Nice touch.

:eyes:

[cgrindley]

12. It is my homeland? You want to make something out of that?

"my home and native land" is how the Canadian national anthem goes. You people do not have utter control over anyone's use of English except your own. Don't forget that we can own you with our mighty dollar.

[Richard Steele]

17. Pfft. You're losing your touch.

[cgrindley]

25. I have a baby due on Friday and three books coming out in January

I've got too much on my plate to completely concentrate on annoying you.

[LWolf]

29. NCLB's negative effects are

well documented. Do you need me to search out some links for you?


There are many more, but you can start with some things posted here at DU in the last several months, plus an outside evaluation:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x7621

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x7649

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x53330

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/darling-hammond

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. Studies show that 82% of studies which produce attention-grabbing headlines are bullshit.

I made that up. Just like Johns Hopkins.

Instead of using dropout rates as the term is currently accepted, they made up their own.
http://newsminer.com/2007/10/31/9634

Last year, Ben Eielson Jr./Sr. High had the highest graduation rate of any high school in the Fairbanks school district — 81 percent with a 2 percent dropout rate, according to figures calculated by the Alaska Department of Education. So local school officials were somewhat taken aback Tuesday morning when they found out Eielson had been classified as a “dropout factory” by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Three local high schools received that damning classification in the highly publicized study performed by researchers at Johns Hopkins and commissioned by the Associated Press — North Pole High, Lathrop and Ben Eielson. But state and local school officials are questioning the methodology behind the study as well as the inflammatory results.

“It doesn’t seem fair to pick these schools as poster boys for some highly inflammatory study,” said Eric Fry, a spokesman for the Alaska State Department of Education.

The Johns Hopkins researchers did not rely on dropout data the school districts have to provide to the federal government. Instead, they compared the number of freshmen a school has, for instance in 2001, with the number of seniors the school had four years later. If the school had fewer seniors in 2004 than freshman in 2001 all those missing students were assumed by the researchers to be “dropouts.”

“It’s not a real solid way in my opinion to calculate dropout rates,” Fairbanks Superintendent Nancy Wagner said.

Those students could have moved to another state or even to another school across town. In Fairbanks, for example, Hutchison High School opened in the middle of the three-year study. Any students who transferred to and later graduated from Hutchison would have counted as a dropout by Johns Hopkins in the schools they left. On Eielson Air Force Base, any student who started high school at Ben Eielson but later moved when their parents were stationed elsewhere would be counted against the school.

[originalpckelly]

10. Wow! That's a profoundly flawed methodology...

it really makes me question their results. I think we need to stop blaming the kids, it's society's fault for failing them, kids are no worse these days than they have ever been, I would suggest it is the decrepit state of our nation that has produced so many dropouts. I think the older generations of this nation have failed in their responsibility to take care of their children.

I mean, we literally live in a nation where parents are stealing money from their children everyday in massive amounts. That's precisely what a deficit is, people are so selfish they'd rather have a short term tax cut to benefit themselves rather than pay a little more taxes and save their children's economic futures.

I really believe this is all about the selfishness of the Baby Boomers. Children are what you make of them, they are the best mirrors of your own flaws. Certainly at some point in their lives you are no longer responsible for their actions, but the values impressed on children in their earliest years do stay with them for the rest of their lives. Shallowness, selfishness, and materialism are not virtues, they are flaws. I think history will reflect that those flaws are cherished by the Baby Boomers.

Maybe their parents were too puritanical, and they caused their children to rebel against such an unreasonable notion. After all, the Baby Boomers are reflections of their parents as well.

That's not to play down the massive accomplishments of that generation, but one has to wonder about the fate of their children and whether it is a result of bad parenting.

[flashl]

15. The methodology is NOT flawed it accounts for ...

The "ninth-grade ‘bulge' (counting those retained as well as those entering) has grown substantially over the last 10 and 20 years, leading to a wrong conclusion that graduation rates have fallen".

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. When used to discredit an individual school, it is flawed.

Our nationwide graduation rate may be overstated, but to call the high school at an Air Base a dropout factory because the incoming freshmen stand a good chance of being transferred is unfair and counterproductive.

In my area, a school which does have a very high dropout rate and very poor test scores is not on the list while a school 2 miles away which has much better test scores and a much higher graduation rate is on the list.

[flashl]

11. This is not the first discussion on inaccuracies of graduation rates ...

April 2006 | EPI book

Rethinking high school graduation rates and trends

Growing national attention has been paid of late to high school graduation rates in general, and the black-white and the Hispanic-white graduation gaps, in particular. This reflects a belief in the important role of education in a knowledge-driven economy, and an appreciation of the fact that those without at least a high school diploma will be more severely handicapped in their labor market prospects than those who have a diploma. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 includes on-time graduation as one of its important objectives.

Unfortunately, there is a lack of agreement on the magnitude of high school completion rates in the United States, as well as its trends over the last 10, 20, or 30 years. The status completion data, as reported by the Department of Education in the widely circulated Digest of Education Statistics, The Condition of Education, and other publications, show the percentages of members of various age groups who have completed high school and are based on household surveys (the Current Population Survey (CPS)) conducted by the Census Bureau.

Several respected education policy analysts have severely criticized these "status completion rates" for allegedly overstating completion rates. Instead, several new measures of high school completion have been proposed, mostly based on administrative data on enrollment in public schools and diplomas awarded then reported to the Department of Education by state education agencies. These new measures show much lower graduation rates than the household surveys.

We find that the school-based enrollment/diploma data show an inaccurately low graduation rate, especially when diplomas are compared to ninth grade enrollment. This is because ninth-grade enrollment includes many students who have been retained as well as those entering ninth grade. This ninth-grade ‘bulge' (counting those retained as well as those entering) has grown substantially over the last 10 and 20 years, leading to a wrong conclusion that graduation rates have fallen. School enrollment/ diploma data, corrected for the bulge, show a steady graduation rate.

Read More ...

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. There is some validity on a nationwide basis to this approach, but the term "dropout factory" not

If you went through Johns Hopkins list of bad schools, you'd find that every military base high school is on the list, due to mobility.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. There's no validity to endorsing NCLB.

Nor is there validity for blaming children for drop out rates.

[flashl]

22. Where in ANY study do you find military school inclusion from DOE? n/t

[flashl]

23. You may be correct about the military base high schools but

when assessing the carnage in the wake of NCLB in communities across the country. America is in an UPROAR.

AP stories about NCLB have shown undisputed disparities in its implementation, states avoiding implementation, states abuses such as suspending marginal children before testing to prevent low scores, and overall lack of funding to properly implement NCLB.

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. I'm not defending NCLB.

But at the same time, I'm not going to silently accept fatally flawed studies either.

I know good people who are being unfairly maligned because their school is on the Johns Hopkins list.

[bullwinkle428]

9. "Idiocracy" is the neocon wet dream!

A nation of blissfully ignorant people, that will never be willing to challenge authority...

[pansypoo53219]

13. HS's are for the college bound.

not everyone wants to go to college. where's the trade schools. where's alternative ones? who needs that fucking exit test?
besides all you need is to be on american idol or win the lottery.
maybe our culture is fucked up.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. Geez, what happened to John Hopkins?

Looks like they're being run by a bunch of drop outs.

[Dems Will Win]

21. The real problem is the curriculum, it was first thought up in the 1820s by Herbart and hasn't

changed much since the Prussians in the 1890s unleashed it on the world in the Herbartian Wave. We will soon have our own progressive curriculum on the Internet, that will be the next stage of the Revolution we are now in.

[flashl]

24. Usually when we are focused on some "problem" ...

thats apears unsovlable with Americans workers it is later found that the "problem" is a setup for some plan in the works.

Do you think this is where we are being directed?

Outsourcing teachers: India set to tutor Silicon Valley

5.30.2005
From the article:

After high-tech industry, outsourcing of educational services is now a growing business with Indian teachers tutoring American school children at a far less cost than their US counterparts.

Also:

Although it is hard to say how many students are spending their money on Indian tutors, a firm estimates that Indian tutors are now working with some 20,000 American students. One big reason for the outsourcing is, of course, cost. Growing Stars, a Bay Area-based small company, with a center with 20 tutors in Kochi, is able to offer one-on-one services for 20 an hour, significantly less than the 45 dollars to 80 dollars an hour charged by US tutoring companies like Sylvan and Kaplan.

Teaching will turn into a minimum wage job through the following process. Read More ...

[Mike03]

26. Ridiculous--the Solution is to Dump NCLB

Jonathan Kozol, in his recent book THE SHAME OF THE NATION, demolishes the notion that NCLB is anything other than destructive to the spirits of children and teachers alike. Furthermore, he argues that our high schools are being transformed into corporate sponsored trade schools where "underpriviledged" children are conditioned to aim for such scintillating careers as manager of a fast food franchise.

Secondly, how do we reward intellectual curiosity and study in this country? By outsourcing these jobs to China, India and other nations, and I'm not talking about textiles but engineering, computer and software development, etc...

This is a self-fullfilling prophecy caused by our lack of respect for ourselves and the intellectual promise of our children.

This is yet another reason why the future looks so dire. What will be be able to contribute if we sell out our children' educations? All we can do is consume, and now that is debatable.

[Dems Will Win]

27. Our curriculum should be to create Agents of Change to save the world

That is the real need now, not creating corporate cogs, or chemists or nuclear weapons engineers.

We need a new curriculum that makes little Ghandis on a mass level.

Then the kids would be interested -- right now they dropout because they are BORED (Gates Foundation study). 88% have good or passing grades!!

They're bored by an irrelevant and disconnected from reality curriculum.

[Mike03]

30. What a beautiful idea

Truly, that is an aspiration I can get behind.

When I was in high school, my teachers were so inspired and meant so much to me. They made me curious about everything, and confident I could do anything. On some level, I feel that is what is missing.

The teachers are not inspired or free to create, and the students are disenfranchised and hopeless.