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January 13, 2001
How severe is the problem?
What do we know about intervention and prevention?
The following papers were presented during the conference
Dropouts
in America held on January 13, 2001, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and co-sponsored with Achieve,
Inc.
These research
papers are not final versions; please do not quote or cite without
the permission of the The Civil Rights Project.
"Easing
the Transition to High School: An Investigation of Reform Practices
to Promote Ninth Grade Success"
Nettie Legters and Kerri Kerr, Johns Hopkins University
This study investigates the types and effects of practices
aimed at promoting ninth grade success. The current high school
reform movement has drawn attention to reform practices that schools
might use to ease ninth graders' transition into high school (Newmann
and Wehlage, 1995), but little is known about the character, extent
of use, and impact on student outcomes of these reforms.
The authors administered a survey to all 175 Maryland
high schools in spring 2000, with an 80% response rate, providing
data on the kinds of transitional practices and programs the state's
high schools are currently using with their ninth graders. The data
will be used to create a descriptive typology of school practices
and interventions aimed at ninth graders that includes frequency
of use across schools, the number of years practices have been in
place and the percentage of ninth graders affected by practices.
State-level data will then enable the authors to assess the relationship
between the various reform practices and student attendance, promotion,
dropout rates, and achievement, controlling for school context variables
such as size, percent minority and average student SES. Qualitative
data in the form of site visits and interviews to be collected in
fall 2000 will supplement these analyses with richer information
about how practices for ninth graders are being implemented at selected
sites.
Easing the Transition to High
School: An Investigation of Reform Practices to Promote Ninth
Grade Sucess
(In PDF Format. 390 KB, 54 secs on a 56 kpps connection) 
"How
Many Central City High Schools Have a Severe Dropout Problem, Where
Are They Located, and Who Attends Them? Initial Estimates Using
the Common Core of Data"
Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters, Johns Hopkins University
While it is generally assumed that the high dropout
rates in urban districts are at least in part due to low performing
high schools, little is known about how many of these failing schools
there are, where they are located, and who attends them. This paper
uses the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of
Data to develop a demographic portrait of low-performing public
high schools in the 35 largest central cities in the U.S. Using
the indicator of "holding power," or the proportion of
students retained between the 9th and 12th grades, the authors estimate
the number of central city high schools with high drop out rates,
examined their distribution and demographics, and identify specific
districts where the problem is most acute. The initial findings
reveal that for recent cohorts analyzed (i.e. 1989-1993 and 1992-1996),
about half of the sampled central city high schools have a holding
power of 50% or less. This suggests the urban dropout problem is
concentrated in between 200 to 300 schools. The data also shows
that there is considerable variation across the 35 largest central
cities in the number and percent of high schools with weak holding
power.
How Many Central City High
Schools Have a Severe Dropout Problem, Where Are They Located,
and Who Attends Them? Initial Estimates Using the Common Core
of Data
(In PDF Format. 839 KB, 1 min 57 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Revisiting
the Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education: Lessons About Dropout
Research and Dropout Prevention"
Walter Haney, Boston College
This paper examines the effect that the full implementation
of the TAAS system (i.e., passing a test for high school graduation)
has had on the grade transition ratios in Texas. Because the Texas
Education Agency's definition of what counted as a dropout has changed
several times over the past decade, Haney examines the possible
effects of the TAAS on grade enrollment patterns and high school
completion. The analysis reveals that one of the effects the implementation
of the TAAS system (phased in from 1990-91 to 1992-93) has been
a dramatic decrease in the progress of Black and Hispanic students
from grade 9 to high school graduation three years later; from roughly
60% in the 1970's to 50% since 1992-93 (Haney, 2000). Further, he
finds that since 1992, Black and Hispanic students' progress from
grade 9 through high school graduation is being stymied in grade
9 before they take the test. The paper gives special attention to
students' overagedness in Texas high schools and the increase in
retention in ninth grade.
Revisiting the Myth of the Texas
Miracle in Education: Lessons About Dropout Research and Dropout
Prevention
(In PDF Format. 796 KB, 1 min 51 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Do
Higher State Test Scores in Texas Make for Better High School Outcomes?"
Martin Carnoy, Susanna Loeb, and Tiffany L. Smith, School of Education,
Stanford University
This paper uses information at both state and school
level to look at the educational progression of students in Texas.
Looking at trends over time, starting in the early 1980's, the authors
look at trends over time to estimate the potential impact of the
1984 reform and the high stakes testing that was implemented in
1990-91. While the authors do not find evidence that testing increased
dropout or retention rates, they do identify a striking propensity
to retain students, especially low-income and minority students,
in the 9th grade, which increased substantially following the 1984
reform.
Rising pass rates on the TAAS, the test administered
to students and the primary measure of school success, suggest that
Texas's goal of improving educational outcomes is being met. Nevertheless,
Carnoy et al. show that high school graduation rates for 8th, 9th,
and 10th graders rose at best slightly in the 1990's, and then only
in the past few years. This is troubling because school graduation
rates in Texas are relatively low in Texas, particularly among minority
groups. The results suggest that the state accountability system
based on TAAS scores may have had positive effects on high school
outcomes in the 1990's if the "official" dropout rate
is a "good" measure of the probability of high school
completion.
Do Higher State Test Scores
in Texas Make for Better High School Outcomes?
(In PDF Format. 647 KB, 1 min 30 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Making
School Completion Integral to School Purpose & Design"
Jacqueline Ancess and Suzanna Wichterle Ort, National Center for
Restructuring Education, Schools, & Teaching
This paper presents evidence from an eight-year longitudinal
study of a reform initiative known as the Coalition Campus Schools
Project (CCSP). CCSP was a collaboration of the New York City Board
of Education, the United Federation of Teachers, and a consortium
of foundations, whose primary purpose was to establish a model for
the reform of large failing urban secondary schools. In many instances,
the CCSP attempted to replace large schools with smaller, autonomous
schools organized for teachers to know students well and provide
them with an education focused on intellectual development. The
paper addresses the research question: What organizational and pedagogical
practices affect student outcomes, in particular graduation and
dropout rates? Relying on a review of interviews, classroom observations,
and official Board reports, the authors argue that students' school
success is positively related to small school and class size, as
well as factors like a performance-based assessment system and the
organization of school structure, curriculum, instruction, assessment,
and professional development.
Making School Completion Integral
to School Purpose & Design
(In PDF Format. 292 KB, 40 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Connecting
Entrance and Departure: The Transition to Ninth Grade and High School
Dropout "
Ruth Curran Neild, Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., University of Pennsylvania;
and Scott Stoner-Eby, University of North Carolina
Much of the literature on school dropout implies a
randomness to the timing of when leaving school becomes more appealing
than staying. In this paper, we examine how one crisis point in
urban students’ educational careers – the transition
to high school – affects the likelihood of dropping out. We
find that despite an extensive set of pre-high school controls for
family, achievement, aspirations, school engagement, and peer relationships,
ninth grade outcomes add substantially to our ability to predict
dropout. The importance of the ninth grade year suggests that reducing
the enormous dropout rates in large cities will require attention
to the transition to high school.
Connecting Entrance and Departure:
The Transition to Ninth Grade and High School Dropout
(In PDF Format. 537 KB, 1 mins 18 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Why
Students Drop Out of School and What Can Be Done"
Russell Rumberger, University of California, Santa Barbara
This paper examines why students drop out of school
and what can be done about it. After briefly summarizing who drops
out of school, the paper reviews the theoretical and empirical research
that attempts to explain why students drop out of school based on
two different conceptual frameworks that are both useful and necessary
to understand this complex phenomenon. One framework is based on
an individual perspective that focuses on individual factors associated
with dropping out; the other is based on an institutional perspective
that focuses on the contextual factors found in students’
families, schools, communities and peers. The paper also discusses
the extent to which these frameworks can be used explain differences
in dropout rates among social groups, particularly racial and ethnic
minorities. The next section of the paper examines various strategies
to address the dropout, reviewing examples of both programmatic
and systemic solutions, and the extent to which policy can promote
them. The final section of the paper discusses whether the United
States has the capacity and the will to reduce dropout rates and
eliminate disparities in dropout rates among racial and ethnic groups.
Why Students Drop Out School
and What Can Be Done
(In PDF Format. 495 KB, 1 min 9 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Are
Dropout Decisions Related to Safety Concerns, Social Isolation,
and Teacher Disparagement?"
James E. Rosenbaum and Stefanie DeLuca, Northwestern University
This paper examines the ways in which students' feeling
unsafe or isolated in their school environment may affect their
school behaviors and their decisions to remain in school. Further,
it examines how teachers respond to students experiencing these
threats. The authors use the National Educational Longitudinal Study
(NELS) data, a national survey which follows students from eighth
grade to six years later, so it allows a good national sample for
studying the incidence of dropouts and a long period to examine
its antecedents.
The authors present evidence that a lack of safety
is strongly related to dropping out and withdrawal behaviors. Students
who feel unsafe and threatened are more likely to cut classes, and
drop out of school, even after controls for SES, test scores, track
placement and grades. They also find that the disparagement of teachers
is strongly related to safety concerns, threats, and dropouts, and
that it mediates teachers' influence on further dropouts. Rosenbaum's
and DeLuca's analyses suggest that students are more likely to feel
unsafe and to get threats of physical harm if they do not fit in,
lack friends, and are put down by students. These safety concerns,
and the informal peer relations, affect student school withdrawal
behaviors, and dropouts. In some cases, they conclude, perceived
teacher disparagement may have stronger relationships with dropping
out than do peer influences, which they propose to investigate further.
Are Dropout Decisions Related
to Safety Concerns, Social Isolation, and Teacher Disparagement?
(In PDF Format. 272 KB, 37 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"High
School Dropout, Race-Ethnicity, and Social Background from the 1970s
to the 1990s"
Robert Hauser, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
This paper presents an up-to-date demographic profile
on dropout trends between 1972 and 1998, examining variables by
race-ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic location (region
and metropolitan), age, sex, and grade in school. The author expands
on previous demographic work on high school dropouts by adding parent's
characteristics of children's school enrollment and completion.
The author examines grade-specific dropout data from
the Current Population Survey and relates it to household characteristics.
Hauser's preliminary findings suggest large socioeconomic and geographic
effects on dropout, which more than account for the observed race-ethnic
differentials in the period from 1973 to 1989. Based on these findings,
Hauser analyzes what may happen in the future under high-stakes
testing regimes.
High School Dropout, Race-Ethnicity,
and Social Background from the 1970s to the 1990s
(In PDF Format. 250 KB, 34 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Essential
Components of High School Dropout Prevention Reforms"
James McPartland and Will Jordan, Center for the Social Organization
of Schooling, Johns Hopkins University
While current research indicates that a variety of
different interventions may be used to reduce dropout rates, relatively
little is known about models for changing entire high schools with
adequate support services. Based on his team's work in Baltimore
and Philadelphia, and selected other urban districts, McPartland
describes both the base of knowledge and the problems in practice
of changing an entire high school geared toward dropout prevention.
He considers the range of interventions he and his team have implemented
through the Talent Development Model. These fall into three broad
categories: organizational factors, instructional factors (e.g.
9th grade curricula, common core curricula), and professional development.
McPartland evaluates how well the various interventions have worked
and how an entire organization would need to change to support these
interventions. He also outlines what the barriers have been to developing
and disseminating a model for high school change, and what kinds
of policy support at local, state, and federal levels would help.
Essential Components of
High School Dropout Prevention Reforms
(In PDF Format. 244 KB, 34 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Dropping
Out of High School and Access to Social Capital: The Role of School
Organization and Structure"
Valerie Lee and David Burkam, University of Michigan
This paper uses the High School Effectiveness Supplement
to the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) to investigate
dropping out between 10 and 12th grade. What is the relationship
between dropping out as an outcome and variables such as school
structure, school organization, and students' social and economic
background ("social capital")? The sample includes a nationally
representative sample of U.S. high schools in urban and suburban
areas, both public and private (Catholic and elite private). In
addition to student background variables, the authors analyze the
relationship between dropout rates and students' school performance
(grades) and the courses they take.
Dropping Out of High School and
Access to Social Capital: The Role of School Organization and
Structure
(In PDF Format. 464 KB, 1 min 54 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"The
National Dropout Data Collection System: Assessing Consistency"
Phil Kaufman, MPR Associates
Without good descriptive baseline data on high school
completion and dropout, tracking the impact of school reforms is
very difficult. The high school completion and dropout data that
are now reported by local, state, and federal education agencies
provide more heat than light on some rather basic questions on high
school completion - how many students drop out in a given year and
how many students will not complete high school.
The author considers major discrepancies in federally
reported statistics between school completion rates and number of
diplomas awarded. What are the possible explanations for this discrepancy?
What can be learned from using NELS data and the Current Population
Survey; what is lost in each data source? The paper provides an
overview of the data that are currently being collected on the state
and national level and attempts to explain why different sources
provide different answers to questions about dropout trends. The
author also considers how the federal investment in dropout research
might be better designed, for instance, in longitudinal studies.
The National Dropout Data
Collection System: Assessing Consistency
(In PDF Format. 386 KB, 53 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Making
Do With Less: Interpreting the Evidence from Recent Federal Evaluations
of Dropout-Prevention
Programs"
Mark Dynarski, Mathematica Policy Research Associates
This work presents major findings from a federally
funded evaluation of the second phase of the U.S. Department of
Education's School Dropout Demonstration Assistance Program (SDDAP).
The evaluation considered how dropout-prevention programs operated,
how programs used their funds, what kinds of students attended the
programs, and whether programs improved student outcomes. More than
20 programs and 10,000 students were part of the evaluation.
The key finding from the evaluation is that most programs
made almost no difference in preventing dropping out in general.
Programs may have had great success in turning around the lives
of some students, but in most programs, program experiences did
not have much of an effect on students. This confirms earlier work
indicating that it is extremely difficult to identify risk factors
(i.e., students who have been thought to have some "risk factors"
often persist, while students who showed none often dropped out.)
Drawing on examples from the various sites, the author argues that
ongoing, school-based personalized attention from adults that may
conceivably make more of a difference than broad intervention programs.
Making Do With Less: Interpreting
the Evidence from Recent Federal Evaluations of Dropout-Prevention
Programs
(In PDF Format. 66 KB, 9 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
"Career
Academy Impacts for Students at High Risk of Dropping Out"
James Kemple, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation
This paper summarizes findings from MDRC's ongoing
Career Academies evaluation, and addresses the questions: To what
extent does the Career Academy approach change educational, employment,
and youth development outcomes for high school students at greater
or lesser risk of school failure?How do the manner and context in
which Career Academy programs are implemented influence their effects
on student outcomes?
The Career Academy approach is one of the oldest and
most widely established high school restructuring and school-to-work
transition reforms in the United States. Career Academies have existed
for more than 30 years and have been implemented in more than 1,500
high schools across the country. The durability and broad appeal
of the Academy approach can be attributed, in part, to the fact
that its core features offer direct responses to a number of problems
that have been identified in large comprehensive high schools. Career
Academies attempt to create more supportive and personalized learning
environments through a school-within-a-school structure. There has
been a great deal of research on the Academy approach. Nevertheless,
previous studies have been unable to determine reliably whether
differences between Academy students' high school experiences and
outcomes and those of other students result from the Academy itself
or from the program's student targeting or its selection practices.
Career Academy Impacts for
Students at High Risk of Dropping Out
(In PDF Format. 204 KB, 28 secs on a 56 kpps connection)
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