Plunging Graduation Rates Signal Long Recovery | Sarah D. Sparks — Aug. 29, 2022

As a consequence of the pandemic, many students are facing difficulties earning sufficient credits and good grades sufficient enough to graduate. This is a helpful read on what different states are doing. 

I'm not sure how I feel about a 13th year of schooling since this could feel like a demotion for high school students. Volumes of research on grade retention should give us pause, especially since it coalesces around the best option of not retaining youth, but rather promoting them with resources. How about a stipend to attend a local community college and make that, in effect, their thirteenth year.

One could argue that this would encourage some students not to graduate so that they can get financial support to go to college, so this could get counter-balanced with other proposals incentivizing high school graduation.

How about, for example, allowing students to graduate early should they choose coupled with stipends for early graduates? The mix of options as covered in this piece opens up a rethinking of high school in imaginative ways.

For example, the idea of states moving more toward mastery- as opposed to seat-time based credit sounds promising for the long-term goal of academic recovery. 

Student portfolios and "allowing students to get credit for multiple content areas from the same course" as Ohio is currently pursuing is innovative and makes sense. Here's a link to the state law that goes into effect in January, 2023: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3313.603

One can certainly bet that Ohio's approach will feel more fair with students as opposed to any new ways our policy makers might devise to retain youth in grade. 

What needs to factor in the mix is that the pandemic didn't shut down students brains and they learned tons, like we all did, about the world, life, and their place in it. Many of us are already looking back and realizing just how much we learned about ourselves, our families, and values in the process. Acquiring a sense of what really matters, albeit frequently mediated through trauma, is nevertheless extraordinarily valuable. They just didn't quite learn all that schools taught. But they did learn. These were perhaps the most valuable, important lessons of their lives and that should count for something.

What the authors describe at the moment as a "long recovery" to dramatically lower graduation rates arguably holds possibility for constructive systemic change in the long run. All is not lost. We can and should be hopeful even as we collectively work to enact positive systemic change that works for teachers and teacher's work, as well.

-Angela Valenzuela

Plunging Graduation Rates Signal Long Recovery

By Sarah D. Sparks — August 29, 2022 | EdWeek

Marcia Oliveira, left, and her son Angelo, 18, talk with a graduation advocate in Charleston, S.C., about how to 

schedule credit-recovery classes around the new restaurant job Angelo had to pick up during the pandemic to 

help his family. Henry Taylor for Education Week

The last few years have presented a “perfect tornado of reasons” for 

students to leave high school, and states and school districts are starting 

to see the fallout. At least 31 states saw declining graduation rates for the 

class of 2021 overall, more than twice as many as in the previous year.

Low-income students and those with disabilities have been the hardest hit, with year-to-year declines for low-income students in 33 states and for students with disabilities in 22 states—more than twice as many as for the class of 2020, according to an analysis of state data by the EdWeek Research Center. The ongoing pandemic disruptions are rolling back years—and in some cases, a decade—of states’ progress in boosting graduation rates for students of color.

(A nationwide graduation rate total is not yet available. Though states are required to report disaggregated graduation rates to the federal government every year, many are behind, and full national data are not expected until next year. Not every state provided Education Week with data for all student groups in every year.)

Remote learning and repeated outbreaks and quarantines have led more students to miss school and fall behind in classes, while increased family illnesses and economic instability have given older students more reasons to leave school and start work early, according to Terri Martinez-McGraw, the co-director of the National Center for School Engagement, which studies and works with schools to prevent students from dropping out. At the same time, overwhelmed teachers and school staff have had less time and energy to track down students who are slipping through the cracks.

In the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, “kids have had a much longer time to be absent, fail classes and lose credits, have behavior problems,” said Robert Balfanz, the director of the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. “High schools tend to be pretty mechanical [in response]: You fail a class, you don’t get credits; you don’t have enough credits, you don’t get a diploma. So we are seeing the first downward trends in graduation rates in 15 years in 2021, and there’s a good chance that continues … because we know kids just still aren’t back.”

Graduation Rates Sink for Second Year, Especially for Vulnerable Groups

Graduation rate declines have accelerated in many states as the pandemic continued. An analysis of state data by the EdWeek Research Center finds 31 states saw drops in graduation rates for the class of 2021, compared to 14 for the class of 2020. 

At-a-glance: Public School Graduation Changes Between 2019 and 2021

Hover over bars to reveal data for each state.

Graduation Changes for Vulnerable Student Groups

The number of states that saw declining graduation rates for students with disabilities and low-income students more than doubled from 2020 to 2021. 

States losing hard-won ground on diplomas

Graduation-rate progress held steady for the class of 2020, whose members had mostly completed their requirements by the time the pandemic began to shutter schools in March 2020. States and districts also offered broad flexibility to students in meeting credit hours and seat time, course and testing requirements, and other graduation requirements.

The graduation flexibility states provided in 2020 “held students harmless” for academic disruptions, but they also may have given educators a false sense of security with regard to high school students’ progress, Balfanz said. State flexibility was intended to be temporary, but students in the subsequent high school classes became more disengaged, not less.

“In Arizona, we’ve lost 10 years of attainment; there’s been such a huge slide,” said Stephanie Parra, the executive director of ALL in Education, an Arizona nonprofit that works with districts to improve graduation rates. “We are going into the third school year still navigating a pandemic, and now we do have clear data that schools are struggling and our students are definitely going to need a lot of support to bring them back.”

The Grand Canyon state saw the biggest graduation declines in the nation. It graduated only 75.7 percent of its students on time in 2020-21, less than it has at any time since the state began calculating four-year cohort data in 2011. The decline has hit students of color particularly hard; graduation rates have dropped 5 percentage points for Black students, 4 percentage points for Hispanic students and nearly 6 percent for Native American students since 2018-19. The state board of education also has found rising student mobility among schools since the pandemic.

Across states that provided data, Asian students were the only group for which fewer states saw declines in graduation rates in 2021 than in 2020. In the same time, graduation rates have declined for Native American, Latino, and white students in the majority of states, and for Black students in 24 states.

How Have Graduation Rates Changed in 

Your State?

More states saw drops in graduation rates for students of every race except Asian students in 2021 compared to 2020, according to an analysis of state data by the EdWeek Research Center. Below, see a breakdown of which states and demographic groups lost the most students. 

At-a-glance: State Graduation Changes, by Race

IDRA Study: Texas High Schools Reach All-Time Low Attrition Rate but Still Lose 80,000 Students

Any report out of the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) on attrition and dropout rates is always the most authoritative in our state due to their consistency in measures over the years. It's shocking to consider, as they note, that "In the last 33 years, Texas schools have lost a cumulative total of more than 4 million students from public high school enrollment prior to graduation."

Disproportionately impacting the Black and Latina/o/x youth, IDRA identified six school policies that lead to higher dropout rates as outlined in their infographic:

• Exclusionary Discipline
• In-grade Retention
• Low Funding and Insufficient Support for English Learners
• Unfair and Insufficient Funding
• Watered-Down, Non-College Prep Curricula
• Testing that is High-Stakes

To this list, I would add the lack of access to Ethnic Studies courses considering that students taking such courses are less likely to drop out of school (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2012). 

Thanks to our friends and colleagues at IDRA for doing this critical work. Check out additional resources they provide below. You can download the IDRA study here [pdf]. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Cabrera, N.L., Milem, J.F., & Marx, R.W. (2012). An empirical analysis of                     the effects of Mexican American Studies participation on student                     achievement within Tucson Unified School District [pdf].

 

Attrition and Dropout Rates in Texas

IDRA Study Gives a First Look at the Pandemic’s Effect on Attrition Rates

Texas public schools are losing one out of five students.

Each year, IDRA releases its attrition study. Attrition rates are an indicator of a school’s holding power, or the ability to keep students enrolled in school and learning until they graduate. Key findings from the latest study show the following.

• Texas is failing to graduate one out of every five students – which translates to losing 10 students per hour.
• The statewide attrition rate is 19%, meaning 19% of the freshman class of 2017-18 left school prior to graduating in the 2020-21 school year.
• At this rate, Texas will not reach universal high school education for another almost two decades in 2039.
• Schools are twice as likely to lose Latino students and Black students as white students before they graduate.
• In the last 33 years, Texas schools have lost a cumulative total of more than 4 million students from public high school enrollment prior to graduation.
• 125 counties had improved attrition rates since last year, 85 counties had higher attrition rates and 19 counties remained the same.

See reporter FAQs and resources regarding attrition and dropout data (and downloadable graphics)

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Quick Links to IDRA’s Attrition Study Stories and Resources

News Release: Texas High Schools Reaches All-Time Low Attrition Rate, but Still Loses 80,000 Students – IDRA Study Gives a First Look at the Pandemic’s Effect on Attrition Rates – See news release

Attrition Study: Texas Public School Attrition Study 2020-21 – See pdf

Infographic: Texas public schools are losing one out of five students – See infographic

Infographic: 8 Types of Dropout Data Defined – See infographic page

Infographic: 6 Policies and Practices that Lead to Higher Dropout Rates – See infographic page

Trend graphs: See attrition rates and numbers over the last 10 years – Look up your county

Article: Preview of IDRA’s 36th Annual Texas Public School Attrition Study – A First Look at the Pandemic’s Effect on Attrition Rates – See article

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Additional Resources

Report: College Bound and Determined – A report profiling what happens when a school district raises expectations for students instead of lowering them

Book: Courage to Connect: A Quality Schools Action Framework

Overview of the Valued Youth Partnership program, which keeps 98 percent of students in school (PDF)

Ideas and Strategies for Action

Cause and Effect: The High Cost of High School Dropouts

When so many students in our schools today do not fit the "traditional classroom mold," this also suggests the need for schools to change for them to fit them better which is something that this piece does not mention.

-Angela

Cause and Effect: The High Cost of High School Dropouts

Matthew Lynch, Ed.D.  Author of The Call to Teach and editor of The Edvocate, www.theedadvocate.org

Posted: 11/30/2014 7:31 pm EST Updated: 11/30/2014 9:59 pm EST

While high school dropout percentages in the U.S. are much lower today than they were a few decades ago, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

So what are the underlying causes? And how does every student who does not earn a high school diploma hurt society as a whole? My hope is that in discovering shared traits among dropouts, we can achieve higher high school graduation rates as a nation.

Why are students dropping out?

One unchanging factor when it comes to the dropout rate is socioeconomic background. Since the National Center for Education Statistics first started tracking different groups of high school students in the late 1960s, the socioeconomic status of each pupil has impacted the graduation rate. Students from low-income families are 2.4 times more likely to drop out than middle-income kids, and over 10 times more likely than high-income peers to drop out.

Household income is the not the only disadvantage many dropouts have, though. Students with learning or physical disabilities drop out at a rate of 36 percent. Some behaviors that are often characteristic in dropouts include being retained from advancing a grade level with peers, relocating during the high school years and the general feeling of being left out or alienated by peers or adults at the school. Overall, a student who does not fit the traditional classroom mold, or who falls behind for some reason, is more likely to lose motivation when it comes to high school and decide to give up altogether.

How valuable is a high school diploma?

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that dropouts bring in just $20,241 annually, which is $10,000 less than high school graduates and over $36,000 less than a person holding a bachelor's degree. The poverty rate for dropouts is over twice as high as college grads, and the unemployment rate for dropouts is generally 4 percentage points higher than the national average. In the end, the lifetime earnings of high school dropouts are $260,000 LESS than peers who earn a diploma.

Why should I care?

The financial ramifications of dropping out of high school hurt more than the individual. It's estimated that half of all Americans on public assistance are dropouts. If all of the dropouts from the class of 2011 had earned diplomas, the nation would benefit from an estimated $154 billion in income over their working lifetimes. Potentially feeding that number is the fact that young women who give up on high school are nine times more likely to be, or become, young single mothers. A study out of Northeastern University found that high school dropouts cost taxpayers $292,000 over the course of their lives.

It's not just about the money though. Over 80 percent of the incarcerated population is high school dropouts -- making this an issue that truly impacts every member of the community. Numbers are higher for dropouts of color; 22 percent of people jailed in the U.S. are black males who are high school dropouts. As a society, we are not just paying into public assistance programs for dropouts, but we are paying to protect ourselves against them through incarceration.

I wonder what these numbers would look like if we took the nearly $300K that taxpayers put in over the course of a dropout's lifetime and deposited it into their K-12 learning upfront. If we invested that money, or even half of it, into efforts to enhance the learning experience and programs to prevent dropping out, what would that do to dropout, poverty and incarceration rates? Right now the process seems to be reactionary. What would it look like if more preventative actions were put in place?
What are some underlying causes of the high school dropout rate not mentioned here?

Follow Matthew Lynch, Ed.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lynch39083

School Dropouts Save Texas Money But Only in Short Term

As awful as this sounds the state does seem to be led by the notion that "dropouts save money". This is supported by historical patterns of students lost in the education pipeline (3 million over the course of 25 years).

Check out the Intercultural Development Research Association's (IDRA) data on dropout and attrition rates in Texas.

-Patricia

by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
October 28, 2011

Every time a student drops out of public school, taxpayers save money. That’s one fewer student, at an annual savings of more than $11,000 per year from state and local sources.

You might argue those kids will cost the state a lot of money someday, either as prison inmates, welfare recipients, or as part of an expanding number of weak links in the labor chain when employers come looking for educated workers.

But the immediate result is that the dropouts save money. And politicians respond to immediate things. Not to kick anyone in particular, but when was the last time you saw a Texas governor or legislator with a 10-year plan? A five-year plan?

When the economy is bad and the favored political trope is no new taxes, no new spending, budgeting is a short-term exercise. Lawmakers stop talking about new programs and such, focusing instead on voters’ demands to keep government as inexpensive as possible. The punishment for doing anything else is as close as the March primary.

The dropout problem has a longer fuse. The reward for fixing it is somewhere in the future, way past the next election.

The public schools are on a 13-year clock, starting with kindergarten and ending with the fourth year of high school. The budgeteers are on a two-year clock that starts and ends in even-numbered years. Their horizons are determined by the election calendar. Politicians are actually pretty responsive. They react to the things that will hurt them, politically, and to the things that will help them, politically. And the judgments they’re concerned with are those delivered by voters.

In fact, there is a disincentive to fix the dropout problem, because it would force lawmakers to make cuts in other parts of the budget or to find new revenue. It sets up like something from the science fair: Suppose you got 181 lab rats and gave them cheese if they saved money and threw them out into the streets if they spent it.

Dropout rates don’t initially look like a budget issue, but if you could wave a wand and end it today — keeping every student in school for the full 13 years — you’d be spending a lot of money. You would be a street rat.

How many dropouts are there? That’s a political fight, to some extent, for another day. But for illustration, go with these numbers, courtesy of the Texas Education Agency: In the 2008-09 school year, 40,923 students in grades 7 through 12 dropped out of school, and in the 2009-10 school year, 34,907 students dropped out. Total spending per student in the 2009-2010 school year was $11,567, including capital spending (operating expenditures per student — the total cost per student excluding buildings, computers and the like — were $8,572 per year).

The state pays school districts according to attendance. If fewer students show up, the state spends less.

Based on total spending, it would cost state and local taxpayers $473.4 million annually to educate that first group of dropouts. The second group would add $403.8 million to the annual nut. Only want the operating costs? That would be $650 million per year.

Since Texas has a two-year budget, and the state’s share of operations is about 43 percent of the total, that particular set of dropouts "saves" the state about $560 million every two years.

Keep in mind that the numbers are based on a two-year sampling of dropouts from six grades — 7 through 12 — and that adding dropouts over time at least doubles the number and could triple it. And remember that the number of dropouts is a matter of some dispute and that these numbers could be low.

The point here is that the policy problem of kids dropping out of school is actually a boon to budget writers if the budget writers are in a bind. It’s money they don’t have to produce at a time when government revenue is in higher-than-normal demand.

It’s a variation on Jonathan Swift’s "Modest Proposal". We’re not eating the children to save money on their welfare — just letting them out of school early.

School Dropout Rates Add To Fiscal Burden

Click here to listen to the story. Transcription below.

Patricia

Claudio Sanchez and Linda Wertheimer | NPR
July 24, 2011

Nearly 1 million kids who start high school every year don't make it to graduation. At a time when federal and state budgets are tight, dropouts costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, health care, welfare and incarceration costs.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host: This week NPR will be airing a five-part series on America's dropout crisis. To give you an idea of what that means, just under four million kids begin ninth grade every year, but about a fourth of them don't make it to graduation. That's almost a million dropouts every year. According to one estimate, from the American Council on Education, there are currently 40 million Americans who never graduated from high school. That is an enormous cost for them as individuals, for the rest of society.

NPR's education correspondent Claudio Sanchez is here to talk to us about the series.

Claudio, the school dropout situation, that's not new. Why focus on it now?

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: The genesis of this series, Linda, began with the reporting that NPR has been doing on the economy. Everybody is hurting, but for people without a high school diploma, the numbers are staggering in terms of unemployment, lost earnings and cost to taxpayers.

It wasn't that long ago, remember, that if you dropped out of high school you could still manage to find a good job. But today, the people who seem to be hurting the most in our sputtering economy are dropouts.

WERTHEIMER: So it's a cost to individuals of income?

SANCHEZ: A high school dropout, according to the latest statistics, will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his or her lifetime, and almost a million dollars less than a college graduate. The unemployment rate for dropouts right now is anywhere from 15 to 18 percent, double what it is for high school graduates. It represents just an enormous loss of human potential.

WERTHEIMER: What about the cost to taxpayers?

SANCHEZ: Well, that's pretty staggering as well. There are estimates of anywhere from 320 to 350 billion dollars to taxpayers. That's in lost wages, taxable income, health, welfare, incarceration costs. We spend a lot of money on these kids.

One other interesting statistic. The vast majority of dropouts today are Latinos and blacks. Now, if high schools were to raise the graduation rate of both these groups to the level of whites - white kids graduate at about 82 percent, so there's an assumption that it is a 10-15 percent dropout rate - personal income for blacks and Latinos would add more than $310 billion to the economy. That is serious money.

WERTHEIMER: So, is the dropout problem getting worse because of the economic downturn?

SANCHEZ: I think the answer is yes. But it depends on who you talk to, or whose data you rely on. The data can be easily manipulated. In 2007, when the economic downturn began, the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reported that nearly 60 percent of high school dropouts were unemployed or not in the labor force. In our reporting we have found that dropouts 25 years and older, for example, often want to come back to get a GED - which is the closest thing to a diploma - but most give up because their reading and math skills are so poor. Many say it's probably not worth coming back and they would rather wait till they're 62 to live on Social Security. Also, one interesting trend is that more and more companies, big and small, won't even consider you if you don't have a high school diploma or a GED. And according to a couple of labor market studies, six out of 10 jobs today require at least two to four years of college.

WERTHEIMER: So, did you find anything as you talk to people around the country that suggests that there is some kind of a solution to the dropout crisis?

SANCHEZ: I don't know if there's a solution, a big solution out there, but, yes, there are many examples of some communities, some cities and states that have done some good things. Chicago is a good example. It has created a network of 22 charter schools that literally rescue the youngest dropouts, some directly from jail. These kids are getting a second chance to improve their reading, writing and math skills; learn a skill and how to apply for a job.

But again, in this economy, there aren't any jobs and the few that are being creating are essentially going to people who are unemployed but with college degrees. The long-term answer, Linda, according to experts, is to intervene early and identify children at the risk of dropping out in the elementary and middle school grades. What we found in Baltimore was that the city has put a lot of time and effort in reducing both the truancy and absenteeism rate. And it claims that it has reduced those rates by half in the last three years. It's a school system that has invested a lot of time and energy in placing psychologists, social workers into some of the poorest schools, especially in East Baltimore. And they're having some degree of success. They're also getting tough on truancy, on absenteeism, where, you know, the city can fine parents $50 or they can essentially put some of these parents in jail, if necessary.

So, it's a tough answer but something that absolutely needs to happen to get at this question of a solution to deal with this problem is just to be able to get a handle on the data. The data right now is so unreliable, so useless because states essentially collect their own data and most of those states don't really have a good way to come up with accurate estimates. And so, if states ever get a handle on the data, I think it will go a long ways towards really solving this problem, because people will know what we're up against.

WERTHEIMER: NPR's Claudio Sanchez. His series on dropouts begins tomorrow on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. It will also be on MORNING EDITION. Claudio, thank you.

SANCHEZ: You're welcome.

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July 24, 2011

Of all the problems this country faces in education, one of the most complicated, heart-wrenching and urgent is the dropout crisis. Nearly 1 million teenagers stop going to school every year.

The impact of that decision is lifelong. And the statistics are stark:

* The unemployment rate for people without a high school diploma is nearly twice that of the general population.

* Over a lifetime, a high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate and almost $1 million less than a college graduate.

* Dropouts are more likely to commit crimes, abuse drugs and alcohol, become teenage parents, live in poverty and commit suicide.

* Dropouts cost federal and state governments hundreds of billions of dollars in lost earnings, welfare and medical costs, and billions more for dropouts who end up in prison.

NPR is looking at the dropout crisis through the stories of five people. Three dropped out of school years ago. They talk about why they left school, the forces in their lives that contributed to that decision and its impact in the years since.

There are also profiles of two teenagers who are at risk of dropping out and the adults who are working hard to keep them in school.

Monday, July 25

Almost half a million black teenagers drop out of school each year. Most will end up unemployed by their mid-30s. Six out of 10 black male dropouts will spend time in prison.

Patrick Lundvick, 19, quit school in ninth grade. He started running with a gang and selling drugs in his Chicago neighborhood. Within a few years, he was in prison for theft. When he got out, he promised his mother he would change. He's now studying at a special charter school for dropouts and hopes to get his diploma and go to college. But he knows that having a criminal record has damaged his job prospects, and he admits that the lure of the streets is still strong.

Tuesday, July 26

The single biggest reason why girls drop out of school is pregnancy. And Latinas have the highest teen pregnancy rates of any racial or ethnic group; 41 percent of Latinas leave high school because they get pregnant. These young women often end up with few job skills, more pregnancies and dependency on unreliable and sometimes violent men.

Lauren Ortega, 20, is a mother of two who is struggling to finish her high school education. She is torn over whether to stay with the father of her children.

Tuesday, July 26

A fifth of the schools identified by the U.S. Department of Education as "dropout factories" (where no more than 50 percent of students graduate) are located in rural areas like Oconee County in South Carolina.

Nick Dunn, 16, hates school and is teetering on the edge of dropping out — just like his father and his four siblings did. But things have changed a lot since his father was young. Oconee County has watched its economy dry up and even adults are struggling to find work.

Wednesday July 27

Studies show that kids who miss a lot of school are at far higher risk of dropping out.

By the time he was 12, Danny Lamont Jones had already missed all of sixth grade and much of seventh. Now at 15, Danny is due to enter tenth grade next fall but isn't sure he'll go.

Officials in Baltimore are trying to intervene early with kids like Danny to try to keep them engaged with school and prevent them from ending up on an inevitable path toward dropping out.

Thursday, July 28

Sixty percent of the nation's high school dropouts are older than 40. Most of them left high school to start working, but few move beyond low paying, dead-end jobs. Only seven percent of dropouts 25 and older have ever made more than $40,000 a year. And in hard economic times, many find that not having a diploma puts them at the end of the employment line.

Kenny Buchanan, 44, was 18 when he gave up on high school. He figured he could earn a living without a diploma, and for several years, he did. But then he got married and found it difficult to find work that could support a family. Before long, employers began refusing to even interview him because he didn't have a diploma.