FOOD
FOR THOUGHT
ON DROPOUTS AND SMALL SCHOOLS
Graduation
is hardly a given for freshmen in 2,000 of America's public high
schools, according to a new study by researchers at the Center
for Social Organization of Schools at The Johns Hopkins University.
Using data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics,
researchers Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters measured the "promoting
power" of 10,000 regular and vocational high schools that
enroll more than 300 students. They compared the number of freshmen
in each school to the number of seniors there four years later.
The results gathered in their report, "Locating the Dropout
Crisis," are troubling. They indicate that the dropout crisis
is fueled by the 20 percent of high schools in which graduation
is not the norm. These schools have "weak promoting power,"
or 40 percent or fewer seniors than the number of freshmen they
enrolled four years earlier. Nearly half of the country's African
American students and two out of five Latino students attend one
of these "dropout factories," compared with just 11
percent of America's white students, the researchers said. The
study found that the high schools producing the largest number
of dropouts are concentrated in 50 large and medium-sized cites
and 10 southern and southwestern states. The study presents tables
showing the number and concentration of high schools with weak
promoting power by state (broken down by locale and minority concentration)
and for the nation's 100 largest cities.
While
the study doesn’t break down the schools with “weak
promoting power” by size of school, the section reprinted
below offers some challenging and provocative analysis of the new
small-schools initiatives:
--Mike Klonsky
New Small School Creation: A substantial
amount of local and private foundation resources currently support
a movement to replace large comprehensive high schools with small
high schools of typically 300 or fewer students. The hope here
is that the creation of new, small high schools will provide students
with an energized faculty and a higher degree of personalized
attention and instruction which, in turn, will lead to substantially
greater graduation rates. While based on a compelling and largely
research-based theory, this movement’s singular focus on
new school creation is its Achilles heel in the face of the number,
concentration, and location of high schools with weak promoting
power revealed in this report. Among the 50 cities in which half
or more of the student population attends high schools with weak
promoting power, there are 39 with five or more weak promoting
power high schools. To replace these high schools with small schools
would require starting, staffing, and sustaining between 25 to
50 high schools in most of these cities, with many more than 100
new high schools needed in the largest cities. The question that
remains to be addressed is the extent to which the financial,
human, and social capital exits to accomplish this overwhelming
task. In cities and rural counties hard pressed by shrinking middle
class populations and tax bases, as well as shortages of skilled
principals, and near continual churn of superintendents and CEOs,
will it be possible to find and sustain the civic capacity and
investment in personnel development needed to equitably create,
successfully run, and manage 25, 50, or 100 plus new high schools?
New Medium-to-Large School Creation: In some cities, efforts are
underway to create somewhat larger new high schools serving from
600 to 800 students. While the economies of scale afforded by
these schools make them a potentially more feasible option for
school systems with limited resources, early anecdotal evidence
suggests caution. The dual pressures of a high standards environment
and expectations of private and local funders (typically present
when schools require new buildings or major renovations to existing
buildings) can result in the shunting of equity concerns as new
school leaders scramble to implement rigorous curriculum and achieve
dramatic results in a short time period. In one such school that
replaced a declining neighborhood high school, the new school
remained non-selective but adopted an open-enrollment system to
attract students from across the city interested in its technology
focus. The school’s brand new curriculum and energized teachers
were not prepared, however, to meet the needs of the substantial
number of students coming in two or more grade levels behind in
basic literacy and mathematics skills. As a consequence, the school
has a significantly higher transfer rate than other high schools
in the city. Just as telling, the enrollment slots reserved for
students from the surrounding neighborhood now go unfilled; neighborhood
families have concluded that the school is for “other people’s
children” (read white and privileged).
Existing High School Conversions: Different approaches to break
free from bureaucratic inertia and create smaller, more personalized
and flexible learning environments, such as converting large schools
into multiple small learning communities, face different challenges.
First, not all low-performing high schools are good candidates
for conversion. Some (we estimate perhaps from 1% to 5% of the
2,000) are such demoralized environments so lacking in leadership,
teaching capacity, and community support that any effort to turn
them around would be quixotic at best. Second, attention to the
process of conversion is very important to its outcome. Evidence
is emerging that high schools that pursue a phased-in or voluntary
approach to converting into multiple small learning communities
or schools-within-a-school can produce marked inequities.
The first smaller units to be developed typically attract the
strongest teachers, entrepreneurial leaders, most motivated students,
and community resources, leaving subsequent efforts to struggle
with fewer resources. Striking images are emerging of large low-performing
high schools in which a section has been turned into a new better
resourced small high school, where the fortunate few are provided
with access to a better education under the daily gaze of the
unfortunate majority still stuck attending a marginally smaller
dropout factory. The alternative, converting an entire school
at the same time, is an extremely intensive experience requiring
substantial technical expertise and commitment to working through
difficult staffing, curriculum, facilities, and scheduling challenges.
FROM:
-
LOCATING THE DROPOUT CRISIS
-
Which High Schools Produce the Nation’s Dropouts?
-
Where Are They Located?
-
Who Attends Them?
-
Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters
-
Center for Social Organization of Schools
-
Johns Hopkins University
-
http://www.csos.jhu.edu/tdhs/rsch/Locating_Dropouts.pdf
