Research: Dropouts flee area schools
By Nancy Zuckerbrod
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 30, 2007

WASHINGTON — Half the high schools in Florida — including several in the Orlando area — are "dropout factories," with thousands of students disappearing before their senior year, according to a new report.

Florida and South Carolina rated the worst in the nation, with more than 51percent of high schools in each state labeled a dropout factory by the report. That meant fewer than 60percent of the students who started as freshmen made it to 12th grade, according to the study.

About 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins University for The Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, no more than a decade ago but no less, either.

In Florida, 163 of 319 high schools included in the study meet the "dropout-factory" description, according to the report. Some of these schools are cranking out more dropouts than graduates, the study found.

State education officials were mystified by the findings, which do not match their statistics.

"I cannot comment directly on the report since I have not seen it and do not know how they arrived at their conclusions," said Tom Butler, spokesman for the Florida Department of Education.

In Orange County, 10 high schools got the label. Those include Apopka, Boone, Colonial, Cypress Creek, Dr. Phillips, Evans, Jones, Oak Ridge, University and West Orange high schools.

Also on the list are Leesburg and South Lake high schools in Lake, New Dimensions in Osceola, and Taylor, Mainland, New Smyrna and Pine Ridge in Volusia. Seminole had none on the list.

Butler said the state has put several programs in place, including a requirement for high-school students to choose career majors, to keep more students interested in school.

The Department of Education claims a 71percent graduation rate for the class of 2006, the latest for which statewide data are available. Based on that data, 92 of 464 high schools — one out of five — graduated fewer than 60percent of students.

Florida graduation statistics have has been criticized before because they include students who get GED diplomas. The Johns Hopkins researchers and others say a GED doesn't equate to a regular high-school diploma.

But GED students would not account for the wide disparity between the report and the state's numbers.

While some of the missing students nationwide transferred to other schools, most dropped out, Johns Hopkins researcher Bob Balfanz said. The data tracked senior classes for three years — 2004, 2005 and 2006 — to make sure local events such as plant closures weren't to blame for the low rates of returning students.

Florida officials say their figures are a better measure, in part because the state has an advanced tracking system that picks up students as they move among schools in the state.

The highest concentration of schools labeled dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around, because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones — the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.

Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory.

Federal lawmakers haven't focused much attention on the problem. The No Child Left Behind education law, for example, pays much more attention to educating younger students. But that appears to be changing.

House and Senate proposals to renew the five-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve, and the Bush administration supports the idea.

The legislative proposals would:

•Make sure schools report their graduation rates by racial, ethnic and other subgroups and are judged on those.

•Get states to build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years.

•Ensure states count graduation rates in a uniform way.

•Create strong progress goals for graduation rates and impose sanctions on schools that miss them.

The current law requires testing in reading and math for high-school students, and those tests take on added importance because of serious consequences for a school that fails. Critics say that creates a perverse incentive for schools to encourage kids to drop out before they bring down a school's scores.

"The vast majority of educators do not want to push out kids, but the pressures to raise test scores above all else are intense," said Bethany Little, vice president for policy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on high schools.

"To know if a high school is doing its job, we need to consider test scores and graduation rates equally."

Dave Weber of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.