Dropping out - The high cost of quitting
School districts across the state and the nation are facing the highest academic expectations in history as they strive to meet the goals laid down in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, chief among them graduating all of their students from high school by 2013 or facing penalties.
One of the greatest obstacles they face is not just getting students to graduate, but keeping them in school so they have at least a chance at earning a diploma. Chronic dropout rates plague schools across the nation and cost society billions of dollars, yet there is not even a national standard for what constitutes a dropout, and reporting practices vary from diligent to fraudulent.
To make matters worse, schools that are working to meet the lofty No Child Left Behind goals are struggling to get the job done on bare-bones budgets that reflect the nationwide economic downturn.
Locally, Vermilion County had the ninth highest dropout rate among Illinois counties, according to the latest available figures, but nobody is immune: Champaign County schools have lost hundreds of teens in recent years.
The News-Gazette has conducted an investigation of the dropout problem, interviewing people who have walked away from school, as well as students, educators and national researchers who are grappling with the dropout problem and proposing ways to deal with it. Our findings will be presented here, explaining why students drop out, the costs that result and what can be done to keep students in the classroom.
Young people jeopardizing their future
BY TRACY MOSS
NEWS-GAZETTE STAFF WRITER
Published Online OCTOBER 26, 2003
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Talking to her 3-year-old daughter through a glass divider at the Vermilion County Juvenile Detention Center, 17-year-old Jessica Barfell realized her future could be spent in an adult prison with nothing but time to think about the education she walked away from.
That experience, along with some harsh words and an ultimatum from a juvenile judge, motivated the Westville middle school dropout to enter GED classes last fall at Danville Area Community College.
“There’s so much in life I need and want to accomplish,” said Barfell at the time, describing her enthusiasm for learning and her renewed self-confidence.
But three weeks into the program, Barfell drifted back to old habits.
As part of her juvenile probation, the judge sent the alcohol and substance-abusing teen-age mother back to juvenile detention.
In the months since then, Barfell has been in and out of court-mandated rehabilitation centers and jail. By court standards, she’s an adult at 17. The system has given her multiple opportunities to get an education and avoid joining the disproportionate number of inmates in the county jail system and the Illinois prison system who don’t have a high school education.
Every year, in every school district in Champaign County, Vermilion County and across the state and nation, students make the decision to drop out of school. It’s a decision that comes with high costs for them and the rest of society.
In Champaign high schools, more than 500 students have dropped out in the last five years, and more than 250 from Urbana High School in the last five years.
In the 1990s, about 3,000 students, an average of 300 a year, dropped out of Vermilion County high schools, and according to the most recent figures, it has the ninth highest dropout rate among Illinois counties.
In the Danville school district alone, 133 high school students left in the past school year.
Now school officials are beginning to take a closer look at the numbers because school districts across the state and the nation are facing the highest academic expectations in history. President George W. Bush last year signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which creates lofty academic goals, including the expectation that schools will graduate all of their students from high school by 2013 or face penalties.
But schools are being squeezed in a vise between raised expectations and collapsing budgets.
Education officials are finding it increasingly difficult to support basic academics, let alone any new, specialized programs that could reduce high school dropout rates and increase graduation rates.
An investigation of the dropout problem by The News-Gazette has learned:
— For starters, there is no national standard for measuring dropout rates or graduation rates. Instead, there is a hash of statistics that mean different things from state to state, and school district to school district. The differing methods of calculating — and reporting — the rates can make a successful school district look worse than a poorly performing one.
In fact, Houston schools, which were part of the so-called “Texas Miracle” in education and an inspiration for the No Child Left Behind Act, recently came under fire for what one official labeled “Enron-style accounting” that concealed huge numbers of dropouts.
As a result, educators and researchers around the country are calling for national standards, centering on a uniform means of calculating graduation rates as the best gauge of school effectiveness.
— Every student who drops out pays a high price, and so does the rest of society.
Dropouts earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less over the course of a lifetime than high school graduates. When compared to college graduates and holders of advanced and professional degrees, the lifetime earnings difference is in the millions.
Schools rely on enrollment for their allotment of state financial aid, and they take a hit in the pocketbook each time a student drops out, worsening the budget crisis most school districts are already struggling to endure.
Society pays a huge bill as well, because dropouts are more likely to be single parents, receive public aid, and require a range of publicly funded social services than their counterparts with at least a high school diploma. They also are more likely to end up in jail or prison, supported by public tax dollars.
And the children of dropouts are born into a lower economic and social bracket, increasing their own chances of becoming the next generation of dropouts.
— Minority groups, specifically blacks and Hispanics, tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers. They also are disproportionately represented in alternative school programs designed to prevent dropouts, leading some to accuse school districts of discrimination and failure to provide equal opportunity. But family income is also a strong indicator of the likelihood that a student will drop out, regardless of race. Children of low-income families are most at risk.
— There is no quick fix, no one-size fits all solution, but there is much that can be done. Early intervention from preschool age on is crucial to preventing students from dropping out later, and it is essential to teach reading and writing skills, which are essential to any student’s success.
Special tutoring, extracurricular activities and alternative school programs are all successful in helping to prevent older students from dropping out, but they cost money that many districts simply don’t have.
Schools need the help of parents and the community at large. With school budgets in crisis, some of the most effective and low-cost means of keeping kids in school comes from an involved community that provides volunteer tutors, mentors and high expectations for its youth.
Local school districts have been seeking solutions, but it hasn’t been easy.
In the Champaign school district, the dropout rate has fluctuated between 2 and 5 percent, just below the state average. In Urbana, the rate has climbed in the last few years from a low of 2 percent in 1998 to 6.1 percent in the 2001-02 school year.
Danville High’s dropout rate has hovered between 10 and 13 percent since 1998.
During the same period, the state dropout rate has declined from 6.2 percent in 1998 to 5.1 percent in 2001-02.
All three school districts are actively searching for ways to keep more kids in the classroom, but the federal No Child Left Behind legislation has put more pressure on the schools.
“Our dropout rate is not what it needs to be, and we need to work very hard to address it,” said Danville Superintendent Gary Tucker. “There’s no quick fix, no silver bullet. If there were, we would have figured out how to use it a long time ago.”
Jessica Barfell fits the profile of many students who drop out. She describes herself as an elementary student who “disconnected” socially first, then academically in the sixth grade, which ended five years of good grades.
“A lot of people didn’t talk to me,” Barfell said of other students. “I didn’t have the money to buy the right clothes. I didn’t look nice. My pants were always too big, my sweaters too big. They just pick you out; criticize you.”
She found acceptance, she said, in an older crowd that smoked marijuana and cigarettes, drank alcohol and did other drugs. Her attendance began to decline along with her attitude. By the seventh grade, Barfell said she was mentally and emotionally separated from school, limping through most of her classes by copying her best friend’s homework and trying to sweat out passing grades on exams. By the eighth grade, she dropped out and later became pregnant.
Barfell admits it would have taken some coaxing to get her into an after-school program, but she believes it would have saved her from the life she’s leading now.
“I would have been doing something productive, instead of being down at the park with my friends after school looking for someone with pot,” she said.
For Barfell, it’s entirely up to her, now that she’s an adult in the eyes of the law, to seek an education that would give her the best hope of changing her life.
She finished a rehabilitation program and just a few weeks later passed the GED test. She was ready for classes at DACC, was looking for a part-time job and had regained custody of her daughter, who lived with her at Barfell’s grandparents’ home in Westville.
Counseling and parenting classes were a part of her regular routine, and Barfell said she would like to become a counselor.
“I’m doing good,” she said at the time. “I complain about having nothing. But I have everything. I’m with my daughter; I’m going to school. I have everything I ever wanted when I was in jail.”
But recently she took another wrong turn, and was sent back to ponder her choices in life from the confines of a cell.
Michelle Shutes started off quickly in school, and was a member of the National Junior Honor Society when she was in middle school in Danville. But like Barfell, she too hit a wall, and by her sophomore year in high school, she was a dropout.
Like many students who drop out, Shutes had a lousy attendance record once she got into high school.
“I loved junior high, but I hated high school,” said Shutes, 18, who dropped out at the end of her sophomore year.
“I skipped a lot because I hated school,” she said. “I would skip all the time and go to friends’ houses in Indiana.”
Since then, she’s earned her GED and wants to attend college. In the meantime, educators wrestle with the problem of how to keep students like her and Barfell in school, and prevent them from taking detours away from education and a better life.
Dropouts: Red flag warnings
No single indicator can be associated with most dropouts because students ultimately abandon school for various reasons, making it impossible for schools, teachers and administrators to find a single solution to the problem.
But parents and educators should take the following signs as red flags that signal a possible dropout in the making.
The student:
Regularly misses school, continued absences leading to poor academic performance and noninvolvement in school activities.
Does not participate in extracurricular activities.
Receives more counseling than most students.
Exhibits a genuine dislike for school.
Typically has poor grades.
Is one or two academic levels below grade level.
Has been retained one or more times.
Has failed three to five classes by high school.
Struggles with discipline.
Comes from a low socio-economic background.
Has a family that moves a lot.
Source: National Dropout Prevention Center, Clemson University.
You can reach Tracy Moss at (217) 443-8946 or via e-mail at tmoss@news-gazette.com
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