Education Week 11/03/2010 issue

Funds Fuel Graduation Initiatives, p.1

The U.S. Department of Education is providing almost $50 million in grants to states and school districts to fund a high school graduation initiative.  This was the first installment, with hopefully more to come in five-year grants.  The current overall high school graduation rate is 70%, but this figure drops to 50% in poor communities.  This high school completion strategy ties in with one of President Obama’s goals, to make the U.S. the leader in college completion.

The funding is aimed at both helping schools keep students from dropping out and bringing back students who had already dropped out.  The new emphasis is on monitoring student attendance, behavior, and coursework in middle school, looking for warning signs.  The focus will be on helping individual students rather than demographic groups of students.  The program will enlist the aid of social service groups and community groups to help returning dropouts make up lost ground, using school “acceleration institutes” and community-based “re-engagement specialists” such as social workers.

The new initiative provides a welcome focus on improvement in high school graduation rates as part of the push to increase college graduation rates.  The future of the initiative is uncertain, however, given funding uncertainties due to the financial crisis.

City’s Black Males Stay in School, p. 1

Baltimore school leaders have been working with a program over the past three years to keep more students in school and on track to graduation.  One result:  Black male students’ graduation rate has increased from 51% in 2006-2007 to 57.3% in 2009-2010.  Overall graduation rates went from 60% to 66% over the same time span.  Blacks make up 87.8% of enrollment in city schools.  Comparable national figures for 2006-2007:  46.7% of African American males graduated versus 73.7% of white males.  The district has also scored higher on National Assessments (83.6%) than would be expected in a high-poverty area.  The emphasis of the program has been on reducing absenteeism and suspensions, providing students with more public school choice options, and enlisting community partnerships.  One strategy has been the “Great Kids Come Back Campaign,” with volunteer s knocking on doors to try to bring back dropouts.

One key has been to change the expectations of adults—it was always assumed that a certain percentage of students would be lost, based on practices such as showing the door to students who came infrequently, who had discipline problems, or who were old but had too few credits.  Instead, an “intervention period” was created for such students while efforts were made to help get them back on track.

Student mindsets had to change as well.  Community group leaders, who “speak a language the community understands,” have been used to help bring defiant and disruptive students into the program.