Lecker: Why students leave high school
Published 6:06 pm, Friday, July 11, 2014
Graduation rates, one barometer of a state's or nation's success in educating its children, are great fodder for political recriminations and grandiose claims. Pundits and politicians manipulate numbers to disparage public schools or claim victory in some reform they champion. However, serious conversations about the humans behind the numbers are rarely the subject of media attention.
A recent report attempted to look beyond statistics and explore the reasons teens disengage from school. Researchers at America's Promise Alliance interviewed more than 200 adolescents in 16 high-poverty urban communities across the country, and surveyed more than 3,000 teens in diverse communities across all 50 states. The resulting report, "Don't Call them Dropouts," provides insights into why students leave high school.
The researchers found a cluster of factors causing students to interrupt their education. The majority experienced three or more "toxic" factors in their lives, including: homelessness, violence, an incarcerated parent, the need to care for or economically support a parent or siblings, frequent school transfers, foster care, personal or family health traumas, and living in unsafe environments. Many of the teens experienced one stressor too many, causing them to leave school behind. Compounding these traumas, students spoke of feeling unseen at school. Those who returned to school often were encouraged to do so by a caring adult. For many, a personal connection is what brought them back to or kept them in school.
It is striking that most of the factors affecting a student's decision to leave school occur outside school. These students are forced to deal with life experiences no teen should have to endure. Society does not provide the institutions to mitigate the stress in these students' lives. That responsibility falls on schools. Thus, it is essential that schools be given the tools to help at-risk teens overcome these outside obstacles to learning. Those tools include academic and social supports, and opportunities for students to find connections and relevance. Since the research shows that dropping out is a long-term process, these resources need to be present in school from the early years.
Yet many of the schools in these communities are under-funded and cannot provide those resources. This lack of resources is at issue in Connecticut's school funding case, CCJEF v. Rell. The needy Connecticut districts at issue in the case do not have adequate remedial support, social workers, guidance counselors, psychologists, security staff, electives, clubs, sports, AP courses, reasonable class size and other resources to provide at-risk students with the individual connection they need.
Giving schools the necessary resources produces tangible results. A recent review of school finance reform across the United States, conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that increasing school funding by 20 percent increased the likelihood of graduation in poor students by 23 percent. During full implementation of its school finance reform, New Jersey virtually closed the graduation gap between white and African-American males. Money matters in education, especially to the most at-risk children.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy would tell us that Connecticut's graduation rate increased some, so there is no need to fund our neediest schools adequately. However, as Trinity College's Robert Cotto has pointed out, the State Department of Education refuses to release data that would allow anyone to verify these claims. Moreover, the state has pushed policies like credit recovery and online courses, which allow for manipulation of credit and grades to provide diplomas when it is doubtful that the students really learned. In Hartford, because of a merit pay system favored by the state, the district inflated grades, allowing students to pass by merely bumping them up to get passing grades. These methods of "graduating" students do not provide the resources at-risk teens need to succeed. They are merely window-dressing.
The CCJEF trial, scheduled to start this fall, will no doubt force the state to face the deprivations of at-risk teens and the schools trying to serve them. But it shouldn't take a costly lawsuit to spur our elected officials to do the right thing for our children. Our children deserve a governor and legislature that give our schools with the resources they need to provide every child with a quality education.
Wendy Lecker is a columnist for Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity project at the Education Law Center.