New Research on Dropouts

Last week the news media seemed unable to stop talking about America’s dropout crisis. So what is this all about, and why all the sudden attention?

Well last week the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center with support from the America’s Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, released a report called Cities in Crisis, which explored the dropout issue with a specific focus on the graduation rates of America’s 50 largest cities. The study found that overall, graduation rates are significantly lower in the largest US cities, and further, that large disparities exist in some of our country’s largest metro areas, where students in a suburban school system may be twice as likely as their urban counterparts to graduate from high school. When EPE employed its own method of calculating the dropout rate, they found that only 52% of students from the largest districts in the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma, a rate well below the national graduation rate of 70%.

How does this play out in the Commonwealth? When looking at Massachusetts, the 2007 four year graduation rate for the state is roughly 81% while the four year graduation rate in the Boston Public School system is only about 58%. It is important to note here that not all the students who fail to graduate drop out. For the class of 2007, of the 40% or so who did not graduate on time about half dropped out while the other half were still in school working towards their high school diploma.

There is also a short list of new research papers that focus on identifying early indicators of dropout. I attended a research briefing last week held by the Rennie Center here in Boston, where I listened to several presentations and a panel discussion all focused on how schools could help improve the likelihood that students graduate on time. One study from the Consortium on Chicago School research found that one of the key factors in identifying students early who may be at-risk of dropping out is attendance in the ninth grade, which in the education policy world is known to be the make or break year for high school students. Specifically, the results showed that 87% of students who missed 0-4 days per semester graduated on time as opposed to 63% of students who missed 5-9 days and 41% who missed 10-14 days, with the downward trend continuing from there. In that same study, researchers also found that the relationship between students and teachers was strongly correlated to better attendance and fewer course failures. This particular finding supports what is at the core of United Way’s strategies in youth; it is all about relationships! I think there are pretty clear implications here about a wide array of ways teachers, guidance counselors and other school personnel could use this information to identify students who are slipping early so that they can be surrounded with the supports they need to graduate on time.

So what does all of this information mean for you? At the end of the day why should you care? Well, if the life outcomes of high school dropouts are not compelling enough, (dropouts are more likely to have a lower income, depend on public assistance, be incarcerated and die young) take a look at what it is costing the state. A recent study, State and Local Fiscal Consequences of High School Dropout Problems in Massachusetts, found that over their lifetime, including the costs of incarceration in federal/state prisons, the average high school dropout in Massachusetts will impose a net fiscal burden of nearly $275,000 on tax payers, and cost the state an additional $181,500 per dropout in lost tax revenue. Further, as the bar for participation in the labor force in the Commonwealth continues to rise (many of the jobs in the fastest growing industries—healthcare and technology—require a college degree) these young people who could be potentially be contributing members of society are completely off the map.

It is easy to sit wringing our hands about such a large and complex set of issues, but we must resist the temptation and find ways that we can act. What can individuals do? We can be there for youth in our own communities, which means everything from being a mentor (Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37% less likely to skip a class) to volunteering at your local school, after-school program, community center and even advocating for school reform efforts through donations of time and money. Simply put, there are things we can and must do and the time to act is now. The costs are just too high not to.