That our national troubles with high school graduation are increasingly in the news is critically important. We should all be disturbed by the latest data from the Alliance for Excellent Education documenting the enormous negative economic impact of the dropout crisis. By some estimates, dropouts cost the nation $200 - $300 billion annually in lost wages and taxes, as well as criminal justice and social service costs. A report just released in California noted that high school dropouts, who are unable to access jobs in the increasingly high-tech economy, cost the state $1.1 billion annually in costs of juvenile crime alone. Author Russell Rumberger argued that dropouts have an immediate impact on public safety as well as the economy.
But threats of punishments to students, like withholding jobs, as proposed in Texas, will only make matters worse, creating a larger school-to-prison pipeline and perpetuating a downward life spiral. These kinds of solutions assume that students create the dropout problem, rather than the systems in which they go to school.
A great deal more of the effort around high school graduation in this country in recent years has centered on initiatives to precisely define and measure dropouts than on how to prevent them. Meanwhile, graduation rates have declined further in many states, and entire generations of students have fallen through the cracks, victims of a system that seems to be more focused on punishments for students’ lack of education and poor performance than on strategies and incentives for developing successful school pathways.
To begin to reduce the dropout crisis, we must start focusing on the students themselves, not just the numbers. Across the nation, states have implemented high school exit exams to increase performance and strengthen accountability. But in many cases, such exams have not been used to help at-risk high school students to access the interventions and instruction they need to earn their diplomas. Instead, these tests have often caused significant growth in high school dropout rates. Students who cannot pass the exam after repeated attempts give up or are pushed out. Of all the countries that use high school examination systems, the United States is the only nation that uses them to deny students high school diplomas.
In the 2008 study Julian Vasquez Heilig and I conducted on accountability efforts in Texas (“Accountability Texas-style: The progress and learning of urban minority students in a high-stakes testing context”, Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis), we found that many schools in “Brazos City” tried to enhance their accountability rankings by developing “creative” ways to keep low-scoring students from taking the state’s 10th grade exam by holding them back in 9th grade and pushing them out by counseling them to GED programs, harsh discipline policies, and fines for absences that caused families to go into debt. Although scores went up, more than 50 percent of the districts’ students failed to progress from 9th to 10th grade where they would need to take the exit exam that would determine school rankings, and only one-third ultimately graduated from high school. What happens to students who are pushed out of the system, and who are then are denied a chance of employment as a result? Society ultimately pays the cost of their failure to get the education and the employment that would allow them to become contributing members of society, which they desperately want to do.
Instead of merely counting dropouts and tallying test scores, we must address the educational systems and structures that have produced our current dropout woes. Many schools in low-income communities simply do not have the education systems in place to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Schools still operate with antiquated factory-model, warehouse structures, where 3,000 or more students cycle through six overcrowded classes a day, taught by teachers who see far too many students a day to provide them personalized attention. (In Los Angeles today, where class sizes are hitting 50, teachers see more than 200 students daily in a reversion to the early 20th century assembly line.) Teachers also often lack the training, ongoing professional development, and support necessary to succeed. High-quality materials, texts, computers, and libraries are scarce and often missing entirely.
Studies in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, California, and elsewhere have shown that schools that graduate urban students at much higher rates create smaller, more personalized instructional arrangements, where teams of teachers work with groups of students over a period of time. All students have advisors and counselors who are responsible for their academic success and who work with them and their families on charting school and life pathways and addressing personal and academic needs as they arise. Schools and parents partner together to raise young people and to deal with the challenges that life in the city poses for families.
These schools offer a rich and meaningful curriculum that is connected to important social concerns and big ideas in the disciplines. Educators demand high levels of authentic performance reflected in graduation standards that require students to undertake scientific investigations, historical research papers, literary analyses, mathematical modeling and problem solving, artistic exhibitions, and community service and internships that connect students to the world beyond the school allow them to develop personal and social responsibility. Strong, capable educators work together in teams to enable more than 90 percent of students to graduate and go on to postsecondary education and successful careers. Students complete high school because they are well-known and supported, and because of the pride and satisfaction that comes from earning a diploma that means they are competent, contributing human beings.
We will not boost graduation rates by creating new punishments or even new reformulations in the graduation rate formula. We will graduate students by redesigning schools so that they support and nurture young people, help them deal with the complexities of their lives, and help them learn material that is worth learning. Long-term improvements to the high school graduation rate require systemic investments and real changes in educational practices at the district, school, and classroom levels.
