Lifesavers: Effective strategies pool resources to keep kids at risk of dropping out from sinking
By:
Marsha BoutelleFall 2009
The statistics are grim:
- California’s public schools produce one dropout for every three high school graduates.
- About half of students of color fail to graduate.
- The economic impact of the dropout crisis is such that “even if half of all dropouts eventually graduate, the remaining half would contribute to more than $24 billion in economic losses to the state over their working lives,” according to the California Dropout Research Project, a University of California, Santa Barbara, think tank.
- A high percentage of dropouts eventually turn to crime. “Reducing the number of dropouts by half … would reduce the number of homicides and aggravated assaults by more than 14,000 per year,” says the CDRP.
- Dropout rates for black and Hispanic students are significantly higher than those for whites and Asian American students, illustrating the urgent need to narrow and ultimately close education’s yawning achievement gap.
What is it with these kids? Are they lazy? Tied to the Web, TV, video games, gangs, the mall, each other, drugs, alcohol? Have they been coddled? Misunderstood? Had too much expected of them? Too little? Been victims of broken homes? Been homeless?
Maybe they just don’t care.
Or maybe they do.
Ninth grade: Feeling good about school
A recent study of more than 130 ninth-graders in five high schools spread throughout the state revealed some interesting information: Most of them (three-quarters) said they liked school, and more than 80 percent saw getting an education as important to their futures. They understood the challenges they might face on the path to graduation (bad grades, poor attendance, pregnancy, drugs and more), and yet they remained hopeful that their academic futures would yield positive results.
Relevance was important to them: Students wanted to know that what they learned in high school would help them in their adult lives, and they were counting on coursework, teachers and counselors to make clear how their school years would factor into their lives after graduation.
Relationships—with teachers, coaches, counselors—were important to them; feeling a lack of support could lead to a sense of isolation: “Nobody cares.” “Nobody will miss me if I drop out.” Often, they said, all it would take to make the difference between staying in school and dropping out was the knowledge that someone—even just one adult—really cared about them and their futures.
“When you have somebody that’s actually gonna be there for you and really support you in all your school educational needs and stuff, then … it boosts you up, you feel better about yourself and your education,” one student told the CDRP researchers.
This study, one of many on the topic, illustrates that what happens in students’ lives during ninth grade and beyond—what relationships students form, how engaged they feel, what roles they play, what is expected of them and how well they understand those expectations—defines their academic futures for better or worse. The stakes—for students and for society—are urgent and very high, and solutions are crucial. Fortunately, many model schools are doing an outstanding job of keeping their students in school and watching, proudly, as they graduate and move forward with their lives. This story will examine their strategies and their successes.
Themes for success
In late 2007, CDRP issued a policy brief, “California High Schools that Beat the Odds in Graduation.” The brief shed light on a study of 22 California schools that were “ ‘beating the odds’ in terms of graduation rates, dropout rates and test scores, compared to schools with similar demographics and challenges” for the school year 2005-06. All those considered were public, noncharter high schools and were controlled for the following student characteristics: eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch; ethnicity; special education designation; gender; and English learner status.
Eventually, six high schools were identified for further study, and CDRP conducted extensive interviews with school leaders. Four themes for success emerged:
- connecting with and engaging students
- engaging parents and community members to support school efforts
- providing interventions and supports to students at risk of dropping out
- creating a culture of accountability and high expectations
Four of these six schools—all with dropout rates of between 0–3 percent and graduation rates ranging from 84.5 percent to 100 percent—yes, 100 percent—are accomplishing amazing feats in the midst of what can only be called a dropout crisis. How do they do it?
Engaging students
Riverdale High School, part of the Riverdale Joint Unified School District in Fresno County, had—and still has—a 100 percent graduation rate. In addition to that distinction, the school won the national College Board Inspiration Award for 2009, one of only three high schools in the nation to do so. In addition to that, Riverdale High won a bronze medal in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual assessment as one of “America’s Best High Schools” in both 2008 and 2009.
What are they doing right?
For one thing, the district’s superintendent thinks size does matter.
“We’re small,” Elaine Cash says of the school. “Research shows that a smaller school environment” is better for students.
Personally connecting with students—and maintaining a connection throughout their school years—plays a big role in Riverdale’s success in curbing the dropout rate.
“Our assistant principals are different from the norm,” Cash says. “We only have 550 students in our high school, but we have two assistant principals. They are each assigned approximately half the students; one has responsibility for the freshmen and sophomores, the other has the juniors and seniors.”
The two assistant principals are responsible for counseling, discipline, class placement, interventions and just about everything else their charges require.
“There’s an accountability on that adult’s part,” Cash adds. “High school students usually don’t have any one person paying attention to that student. Our students have told us that the relationships they have with their assistant principals and their teachers have kept them wanting to stay in school and moving forward.”
The school motto is, “See It and Believe It,” the superintendent says, explaining, “Our intent [with the motto] was to invite the adults in our school to recognize that all kids can do well if we give them the support they need.”
Another method Riverdale employs to provide the personal touch that leads to student engagement is to assign struggling students as aides to teachers who relate to them. Students earn credit for these arrangements and feel valued by these relationships.
“Someone is listening to them, paying attention to them, asking how they are doing in their classes,” Cash says. “That makes a difference.”
Another school with a high graduation rate (95.9 percent in the CDRP study), while recognizing the importance of student engagement in keeping kids in school, manages the discipline differently.
Sanger High School’s dropout rate is less than 1 percent, and Mark Johnson, superintendent at the Sanger Unified School District, has his own philosophy about what is important.
“You can’t reduce the dropout rate by focusing only on high school,” Johnson says. “You must increase student achievement at all levels. Middle school [intervention] is important, too.”
Once students matriculate to Sanger High, they are expected to maintain high levels of participation in a variety of extracurricular activities. The school has an Internet Club which functions in cooperation with the local Rotary Club. This school year, a Link Crew program will be established that hooks up ninth-graders with 11th- and 12th-graders who mentor them through their entire freshman year.
There is a Community of Caring club at Sanger High—as there is at other schools in the district. Community of Caring is “a K-12, whole school, comprehensive character education program with a unique focus on disabilities,” according to its Web site, and it operates under five core values: caring, respect, responsibility, trust and family. Through the program, students participate in schoolwide activities and community-service projects.
Johnson is especially proud of the school’s mentoring program, where last year 65 credentialed employees mentored a total of over 300 high-risk kids and helped to keep them in school.
Data collection and analysis play an important role in helping to identify and assist at-risk students.
“We look at data on a quarterly basis,” Cash, the superintendent back at Riverdale, says. “We look at attendance, how many failures we have, in what classes those things are happening.
“Data can be very telling in terms of where students are struggling,” she adds. “If we have a lot of failures in one particular subject, it certainly drives us to intervention.”
Selma High School, part of the Selma Unified School District in Fresno County, has “made a concentrated effort to increase student attendance” after tracking the data, according to Mark Babiarz, the school’s principal.
“Other data analysis via EduSoft [a standards-based assessment program] is used in core subjects to determine needed areas of intervention for students,” Babiarz says. “This allows for real-time intervention, which provides students with real-time support they need to successfully complete those core classes.”
Annual student and parent surveys, state test scores and evaluations of instructional programs’ effectiveness add to the cache of information Selma finds helpful in reaching out to students.
Engaging parents and the community
Both Selma High and Selma Unified employ a variety of techniques to inform and engage parents about their children’s academic well-being. A Parent Empowerment Program, in conjunction with the University of California, Merced, “provides both English and Spanish [language] classes for parents that cover all aspects of high school and college preparedness,” Babiarz says.
“Learning directors” and “career technicians” present evening workshops to assist students and parents as well. Both the school and district maintain Web sites to keep everyone informed of events and activities. The school produces a bilingual English-Spanish newsletter and an online newspaper that includes student-developed podcasts to provide even more essential communication for parents and the community.
Other schools and districts studied also maintain newsletters and Web sites as a way of connecting with parents and the public but often add their own twists on engagement. One of the more unique applications is that which Sanger High requires of every 12th-grade student.
“One of our strongest partnerships is with Sanger Rotary,” says Marc Johnson, Sanger Unified’s superintendent. “Every 12th-grader has to successfully complete a senior exit interview with a team of Rotarians,” where the student presents a portfolio containing a record of class grades, employment, at least three letters of recommendation, work samples, essays, math work, attendance records, academic or sports awards or some combination thereof. The portfolio and exit interview are graduation requirements and help students build a bridge from the academic world to the world of work outside the high school hallways. Johnson says many students successfully parlay their approved portfolios into jobs after high school.
Another big benefit, he adds, is that “Rotarians walk out of there saying, ‘Oh, my gosh. We’ve got really great kids at Sanger High!’ ”
The Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento County, and its Valley High School (another school that made the CDRP six-school cut), use School Loop, an interactive, Web-based program that allows for communication between teachers, parents and students. Parents also participate through college nights, open houses, back-to-school events, school-site council meetings, parent education programs and adult education classes.
Intervention and support
A big part of preventing children from dropping out of school is identifying risk factors early on and taking steps to intervene and redirect at-risk students’ energies.
Selma Unified employs an organized approach that begins prior to high school and assigns school counselors to provide individualized support.
“As a district, we have established a system that really tracks students through their data, both on state assessments as well as our local assessments. Each teacher is able to clearly communicate where the student is strong as well as where the student needs to improve on specific areas in English and math,” says Mark Sutton, the district superintendent.
“We track all this data through EduSoft and from the information we receive on our state assessments. Once [an at-risk student is] identified at the elementary level, a parent conference is held to discuss what can be done at home to support the student and what we will be doing at school.
“At the middle and high school levels, our at-risk counselor works with the teachers and parents to make sure no students fall through the cracks. We also use an after-school program in grades K-8 to really help support what our struggling students need to help them gain levels in core areas.”
At Sanger Unified, too, intervention begins prior to high school.
“About five years ago, we started looking at the reading levels of incoming eighth-graders,” says Johnson. “For those not meeting minimum standards, they lose an elective and go into a corrective reading program instead. That is a requirement.”
As evidence that this intervention is working, Johnson points to supportive statistics in the district: In 2002 at Jefferson Elementary School, only 3.3 percent of students were proficient English language learners. By the end of 2008, the number had soared to 49 percent. And, Johnson adds, “Our demographics haven’t changed. We still have 100 percent free and reduced-price lunch students and the school is 99 percent minority [students].”
Four years ago, the district restructured as a PLC (Professional Learning Community) at Work program, modeled on the programs initiated by education researchers Richard and Rebecca DuFour and Robert Eaker.
“What you have,” Johnson says, “are teams of teachers who have common course requirements that are setting common learning requirements. They talk about the kids who aren’t learning, and they decide as a group how to reach them.”
Accountability and high expectations
Remember Riverdale High School, the one with the 100 percent graduation rate? This year, 92 percent of its graduates enrolled in community or four-year colleges.
“All our students are in college prep courses,” says Cash, the district superintendent. “We have almost tripled the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses. We also use the Advancement Via Individual Determination program, that aids disadvantaged students.
“We maintain strong after-school programs to support students with academic help and enrichment,” Cash continues. “We’ve got guitar, dance and yoga classes [this year]; we’ll have martial arts and cooking classes next year.”
Riverdale’s board mandates that in order for students to earn a diploma, they must either be enrolled in college or post-secondary education (trade or vocational schools) or have a letter indicating they have a job lined up after graduation.
Sutton, superintendent at Selma Unified, says “The high school has adopted a no-excuse mentality. All of our students are put on a college-track education when they enter the ninth grade. All of our students take college-prep English classes, and AP classes are offered in many areas. We have also instituted a rigorous attendance policy that limits the number of absences allowed each year. In order to graduate, a student must not have more than 10 absences in any school year while attending the high school.”
Sanger Unified adopts a similarly rigorous approach in setting graduation requirements for high school seniors.
“Every child there is expected to complete a college preparatory class,” Johnson says. “Every child leaves Sanger High with a diploma [in hand]. There is no option. Every core course we have is a college-prep class; then we have honors and AP beyond that. As a result, we have a very low dropout rate, the second lowest in [Fresno] county.”
Johnson sums up his district’s philosophy succinctly.
“When we provide an environment where it’s harder to fail than to succeed, kids come to school. They come to school.”
Marsha Boutelle (mboutelle@csba.org) is a staff writer for California Schools.
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