blackvoicenews.com

SB County ratchets up its anti-dropout campaign in middle and high schools

By Chris Levister –

Its daybreak Thursday and 15 year old Tevon whom his classmates call ‘Midnight’ is cleaning his teeth readying for bed. School is not on his agenda. His blood shot eyes and liquor tinged breath evidence a night of hanging out and drinking.

In October 2009 Tevon was among thirty-eight students picked up off the streets during school hours in Victorville and Adelanto and brought back to the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds.

Officials then called the truants’ parents to pick them up. As part of the sweep, 27 parents were cited for not getting their school-aged children to school.

“These are not parents whose kids missed one or two days of school,” said Pat Johnson, senior director of student services with the Victor Valley Union High School District. The 100 parents and guardians targeted have had numerous opportunities to get their children to school, Johnson said, and had even signed a student-parent agreement stating the child would be at school every school day for 30 days.

Tevon now lives with relatives in San Bernardino. He said he tried going back to class even at night. “School ain’t for me. I’ve been failing since I was in the sixth grade,” he said.

Tevon who plans to move to Georgia next month is among the 31.7 percent of African American students who dropped out of San Bernardino County schools during the 2007-2008 academic year. At the end of 2008, the California Department of Education reported the county’s dropout rate as 22.5 percent compared to a statewide rate of 18.9 percent.

The dropout rate in Riverside County is 17.3 percent.

Nationally Tevon is among the estimated seven thousand students who drop out every school day. What’s more, nationwide over a million of his former classmates who entered ninth grade will not graduate with their peers four years later. Perhaps this statistic was acceptable fifty years ago, but not in the era of No Child Left Behind, an intense spotlight failing schools and “Value Added” teacher evaluations, which is one of the most hotly debated issues in public education. According to researchers at the Alliance for Excellent Education, for decades, schools and districts published misleading or inaccurate graduation rates, reporting their one-year dropout rates as only 5 or 6 percent and as a result, the American public knew little of the scope and gravity of the problems faced by many of the nation’s high schools.

Out of the shadows the improved data has not only raised the level of debate but has exposed alarmingly low graduation rates that were previously hidden behind inaccurate calculations and inadequate data.

According the new Education Week report, “Graduation by the Numbers: Putting Data to Work for Student Success,” far too many students are not graduating on time with a regular diploma.

Low-income and minority students fare the worst in the drop out epidemic.

Author Christopher B. Swanson, vice president for Research & Development at Editorial Projects in Education Inc., the nonprofit that owns Education Week is a national expert on dropouts. He discovered, for example, that 25 of the 11,000 U.S. school districts with high schools accounted for one out of every five students who failed to graduate in 2007. Those 25 districts at the top of the dropout scale had a quarter million non-graduates, as many as were counted in the lowest ranking 8,400 districts. San Bernardino City Unified ranked 19 with 5,051 non graduates in 2007. On the flip side, Swanson analyzed the nation’s largest urban school systems and then singled out those whose graduation rates that were significantly higher based on their size, poverty level and other characteristics. Riverside City Unified ranked 15. In 2007 the district exceeded graduation predictions by 12 percentage points.

Experts say while there is no single reason that students drop out, research indicates that difficult transitions to high school, deficient basic skills, and a lack of engagement serve as barriers to graduation. Research shows dropouts like Tevon are already on the path to failure in the middle grades and engage in behaviors that strongly correlate to dropping out in high school.

Nationally, about 71 percent of all students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma, but barely half of African American and Hispanic students earn diplomas with their peers. According to Alliance for Excellent Education, in many states the difference between white and minority graduation rates is stunning; in several cases there is a gap of as many as 40 or 50 percentage points.

In his February 2010 State of Education Address, SB County Superintendent Gary Thomas said the county’s dropout rate fell 3.8 percent between 2007 and 2008 yet low graduation rates and high dropout rates remain the “most pressing issues” facing public education.

In his 2009 anti drop out campaign “Every One Counts”, Thomas said, graduation and dropout rates have severe ramifications that extend well beyond public education. “We need a more highly skilled and educated workforce to meet the demands of employers and sustain the economic viability of our region.”

Thomas said despite current challenges, this year’s Accountability Progress Report shows that for the first time since state testing began 11 years ago, schools in the county exceeded state averages with 61 percent of all schools meeting their Academic Performance Index (API) targets. He said a record of 40 more schools reached the state standard of 800 on their API scores.

Beth Higbee, County Assistant Superintendent Education Support Services cited one growing program that consistently has been successful in keeping students in school on the path to college is Advancement Via Individual Determination AVID.

While AVID serves all students in secondary schools, its primary focus is on the least-served students in the academic middle Dr. Higbee said. Last year, 89 percent of nearly 1,200 county seniors in the program were accepted to a four year college or university. She said this year it’s expected that more than 34,000 students in some 200 middle and high schools in the region will be enrolled in AVID.

Dr. Thomas added with the state budget situation and national economic crisis for public education, the outlook remains bleak. Despite the grim assessment Thomas says he’s committed to fight for all students in the county, “so they can have every chance to achieve academically. Every one of our students counts, and they are counting on us.”