Graduation Rates Highest in 40 Years

High school graduation rates are now at their highest level since the 1970s. In 2009-2010, 78.2% of students earned their diploma in four years, compared with 75.5% in 2008-2009. The graduation rate peaked at 78.7% in 1969-1970 and declined steadily until recently, dropping as low as 71% in the 1990s (data from Bloomberg News). The largest increases were among African American and Hispanic youth.

On the one hand, we should all take a step back and relax. Our schools are not failing—they are improving—and the frantic push for reform is excessive and unnecessary, or at least not urgent.

On the other hand, the market-driven reformers would love to take responsibility for the gains and claim that their privatization schemes have worked, thus justifying more of the same. Yet there is no clear evidence to support this and there are plenty of other plausible explanations.

For one, we live in a very different world than we did in the 1960s and 70s, when there were ample decent-paying jobs available to those without a high school diploma. Back then, dropping out of high school and going to work in a blue collar trade or on an assembly line made economic sense, particularly if one lacked the money or grades for college. Today, this is a much riskier option. Many of these jobs have disappeared and the ones that remain pay much less than they used to. Indeed, the youth unemployment continues to be substantially higher than the overall unemployment rate (16% for those under 25, as of November 2012).

Another option for high school dropouts has been the military. While this was a poor choice in the 1960s and early 70s, when the risk of dying in Vietnam was relatively high, from the mid-70s through the 1980s a person could make a decent living in the military without much risk of ever seeing combat and many lower income youth took this option. However, joining the military today could easily lead to a risky tour of duty (or several tours) in a violent and volatile region of the world.

While some reforms have no doubt also contributed to the rising graduation rate, these are not necessarily the market driven reforms like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, privatization and vouchers, Value-Added Measures of teacher effectiveness or Common Core Standards. Rather, increased funding for and enrollment in programs like Head Start and preschool—which help close the achievement gap that exists prior to entering the K-12 education system—increase students’ self-efficacy and school-readiness, thus improving their chances of succeeding in school over the long-term. This might also be one of the reasons why K-5 math test scores have increased so much over the past decade.

Another hypothesis that has been proposed is the closing of “dropout factories.” On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer: close the schools that produce the dropouts and more kids will necessarily graduate from school. The problem with this hypothesis is that is says nothing about where those students end up after their school has been closed or why they were dropping out at high rates in the first place, let alone whether they graduated from their new schools.

If they were dropping out because of a poorly administered school or incompetent teachers and they were reassigned to one with good management and effective teachers then we should expect an increase in graduation rates. However, because graduation rates are strongly correlated with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, simply changing schools, teachers or administrators should not solve the problem. Many of these students have had poor academic success throughout their lives, resulting in low self-efficacy and they have given up on school.

Furthermore, the likelihood of graduating on time from high school is directly linked with students’ experiences in middle and elementary school. For example, students with high absenteeism in grades K-5 have a much higher rate of dropping out of high school. This is because they are behind in credits and prerequisite knowledge due to their absences. Poverty also leads to a significant achievement gap before kids have even started kindergarten, a gap that tends to grow with time unless mitigated early, in the pre-K and K-5 years. As a result, by the time they enter high school, many are reading far below grade level and lack the study and social skills necessary to succeed in high school. Shutting down “dropout factories” does nothing to solve these problems.

Another hypothesis that is seldom discussed in the media is the changes to teacher attitudes and training that have occurred over the past two decades. In the past, it was relatively common to track students based on their perceived or assumed abilities, which led to classes that were highly segregated by race and economic background. This likely contributed to children’s sense of alienation from school and sense that they could not succeed. Today, education programs (and many K-12 schools and districts) place a great deal of emphasis on learning how to relate to and support children from diverse backgrounds. There has been an effective movement to eliminate (or reduce) tracking and encourage children of all ethnicities, genders and socioeconomic backgrounds to take challenging courses (e.g., Advanced Placement), apply to college and maintain sufficient credits and grades to get into college. As a result, there have been large increases in the numbers of students taking and passing AP exams from virtually all backgrounds.

Anecdotally, from my own experience, it seems there has also been a growing movement for teachers, counselors and support staff to become more personally involved in students’ lives, to notice when students seem to be falling through the cracks and to contact home and help them access the appropriate support services. If this is indeed a growing trend, it could also help explain the higher graduation rates, as it would help many at-risk kids overcome the obstacles to graduating on time.

Graduation rates have steadily climbed for the last decade. During that time, teen pregnancy, drug use and violence have declined. It could be that our children are simply better behaved and more willing to do what is expected of them than their parents’ generation was.

8th Grade Literacy & Poverty Predict HS Grad Rates

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Thanks to Rachel Norton, San Francisco School Board member, for her recent blog post: “Who is likely to finish HS? You can tell in 8th grade,” and Kathryn Baron, from the Topics in Education blog, for her recent post: Poverty + poor reading = dropout.

According to a recent study, which examined nearly 2.6 million student records from urban districts across the country, two factors determine whether 8^th graders will go on to graduate from high school: having a GPA over 2.0 and an attendance rate over 87.5%. Impressively, 89% of students who had both and who passed all their academic core courses (math, English, social studies or science) graduated in four years.  However, simply passing all core classes was insufficient. 55% of students who had either poor attendance or low GPAs failed to graduate from high school in 4 years, even if they passed their core classes, while only 24% of students graduated on time if they possessed both risk factors.

Unfortunately, Norton did not provide the title or authors of the study, but there are numerous other studies that have replicated these results. For example, Allenworth and Easton¹ found a strong correlation between GPA and graduation. Students with a 1.5 GPA had a 62% chance of graduating on time. Those with a 2.0 GPA had a 74% chance of graduating and those with a 2.5 GPA had an 86% chance. They also found a strong correlation between attendance and graduation rates, with only 64% of students graduating high school on time if they missed five to nine days during the ninth grade. The number went up to 87% if they missed less than five days. A study by Martha A. MacIver² found that 80% of students graduated on time if they were in class at least 95% of the time during the 9^th grade, whereas less than 20% of students graduated on time if their attendance was below 70%. (Click here to view the policy brief) There was also a study of Baltimore school children³ in which high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. In a prior study⁴ the same authors found that low test scores and report card grades in first grade were a reliable predictor of later high school success.

This is probably not news to most teachers, as we have all experienced students who failed due to poor attendance. Many of us routinely have students who are absent 20-30% of the time (or more). While it is tempting to blame the schools for this problem, since they could always implement tougher attendance rules and consequences for unexcused absences, it would not solve the problem. There are a host of societal and familial problems that contribute to both absenteeism and low GPAs. For example, low income students are much more likely to be absent due to illnesses that go untreated and worsen due to lack of health insurance. They are also more likely to miss school in order to help with familial responsibilities like caring for a sibling or sick relative. According to the 2001 study by Alexander, et. al.³, students of lower socioeconomic status were four times more likely to drop out of high school than their wealthier counterparts.

It is true that high school graduation can be fairly accurately predicted by absences and GPA in 8^th grade (or even 1^st grade, according to Alexander, et. al. 2000³). However, these factors are not necessarily the cause of high school failure. Rather, low graduation rates and poor attendance could both be symptoms of a larger problem: poverty. Certainly a few Ds and Fs early in one’s academic career could set a student so far back that it is difficult or impossible to catch up and graduate on time. Likewise, one bad health year (e.g., injury, whooping cough, pneumonia) could cause a student to get so far behind in all classes that the entire year must be repeated. However, kids who are absent a lot in 9^th grade are generally absent a lot in all grades. Richard Rothstein says that poor children have 40% more absences than middle class kids. Similarly, students often have poor report cards throughout their academic careers for numerous reasons like low self-efficacy, difficulty focusing for extended periods of time, learning disabilities, or stress and anxiety at home.

Kathryn Baron’s post, like Norton’s, focuses on predictors of high school graduation rates. Her piece looks at a new longitudinal study that shows a direct link between third grade reading and high school graduation. Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation, which followed almost 4,000 students born between 1979 and 1989, found that third-graders who are poor readers are four times more likely to drop out of high school as those who are proficient readers.

Again, there is nothing surprising here. Poor literacy not only makes it difficult for students to comprehend test questions, homework assignments and textbooks, it can lower their self-efficacy and make school so frustrating that they stop trying. The more interesting part of the study was the observation that poverty could override the future benefits of reading proficiency. Students who were good readers, but who had lived at least one year in poverty, were just as likely to drop out as children who were poor readers but who had never experienced poverty.

While affluence can counter some of the effects low literacy, the majority of poor readers are also economically disadvantaged. Baron says that 83% of 4^th graders receiving free or reduced lunch are also reading below grade level, while 70% of high school dropouts are economically disadvantaged.

There are numerous interventions that can help some low income kids succeed in school. For instance, encouraging low income parents to read to their babies and to use more complex language at home can help counter the vocabulary and pre-literacy gap that exists by the time children are three (see Hart and Risley and David Burkam and Valerie Lee). Some children just need better health care or even eyeglasses, while others could make big gains with tutoring or support for undiagnosed learning disabilities.

However, there are additional consequences of growing up poor that cannot be remediated so easily and that contribute to poor literacy, absenteeism and poor academic achievement. Iron-deficiency anemia, which can impair cognitive ability, is twice as common among poor children, while an estimated 10% of poor students have dangerous levels of lead in their blood, which can lead to learning disabilities and decreased intelligence. Poor kids are more likely to be born premature and with low birth weights, which can also cause learning disabilities and impaired cognitive development. Simply living in a family that is experiencing financial uncertainty can create stress and the overproduction of the hormone cortisol, which can damage memory and lead to chronic health consequences that increase absenteeism. Financial uncertainty also increases the likelihood of having to move and change schools. A 1994 report by the General Accounting Office found that 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17%, respectively, for those who remained at the same schools. Poor children are also less likely to have a safe, quiet place to study when they get home or to have someone who can help them with their work. During summer, they are less likely to go on intellectually stimulating vacations, take enriching classes and workshops, or play organized sports.

While it is true that some poor kids do beat the odds and succeed in school, it is these hard to remedy problems that explain why so many other poor kids continue to fail in school despite all the interventions, supports and reforms that educators have implemented. It is time to stop glorifying the few schools that have supposedly beaten the odds by getting poor kids to succeed. Even with all the extra funding and the ridiculously long hours their teachers are expected to work, the majority of poor kids are still going to slip through the cracks, because they are still poor, malnourished, untreated for their health problems, poisoned by the toxins in their homes and neighborhoods and stressed by their family’s financial insecurity. If we really want to close the achievement gap, then we need to start by closing the wealth gap.

References

1. Allensworth, E. M., & Easton, J. Q. (2007). What matters for staying on-track and graduating in Chicago Public High Schools: A close look at course grades, failures, andattendance in the freshman year. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Consortium on Chicago School Research. http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/07%20What%20Matters%20Final.pdf
2.  MacIver, Martha A. (2011) Moving Forward to Improve Graduation Rates in Baltimore City, Baltimore Education Research Consortium, Baltimore, Md. April 2011
3. Alexander, Karl L., Entwisle, Doris R., and Kabbani, Nader (2001), “The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective: Early Risk Factors at Home and School,” Teachers College Record
4. Alexander, Karl L., Entwisle, Doris R., and Kabbani, Nader (2000), “The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective: Part I, Profiling Risk Factors at Home and School,” Balitmore, MD. John Hopkins University.

Vax Alert: 2 Doses of Chickenpox Vaccine, 98% Protection

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When teaching about infection and immunity to my high school students, I almost always have a student who claims that she or he caught chickenpox despite having been vaccinated. Scientists now know that two does of the chickenpox vaccine are 98% effective at stopping the disease, while a single dose only confers 86% protections.

Anti-vaxxers, if they are reading this at all, are probably thinking, “So what? It’s a harmless disease, why risk even one dose of the dangerous vaccine?”

Answer: The chicken pox vaccine is very safe and 98% protection is quite high for a vaccine, making it one of the most effective vaccines out there. Allowing children to acquire immunity by catching chickenpox is certainly safer than measles or whooping cough, but there is still the risk of complications.More importantly, by getting the vaccine, you protect your child from catching the much more serious and painful disease shingles later in life. Allowing children to get passive immunity to chickenpox leaves them vulnerable to shingles.

However, the most likely risk to occur is that of being sick for several weeks and missing a lot of school. As a teacher, I think it’s important to remind parents how important good attendance is to their children’s academic success. In a study of Baltimore school children, for example, researchers found that high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year during elementary school, compared with 11.8 for those who graduated on time. In other words, poor attendance during a child’s early school years can have long-term implications, sometimes even affecting their ability to graduate high school.