1. Locating and Preventing the Dropout Crisis
How to Target and Transform High Schools Which Produce The Nation’s Dropouts
Robert Balfanz & Nettie Legters
Center for Social Organization of Schools
Johns Hopkins University
Prepared for the Alliance for Excellent Education
March 28, 2007

2. Dropout Crisis 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year
7,000/day, 12 million over the next decade
Half of the nation’s dropouts attended a dropout factory

3. Where Did All The Freshmen Go?
12th Graders
197
11th Graders
259
10th Graders
327
9th Graders
484
Number of 9th Graders in 1996/97 = 669
% Fewer 12th graders in 1999/2000 than 9th graders 1996/97 = 71%

4. Promoting Power Twelfth grade enrollment Yr X
Ninth grade enrollment Yr X-3
It is not a direct measure of dropout/graduation rates
It is a strong indicator of high schools with low and high graduation rates
It is easily calculable and uses readily available data
We classify High Schools with Promoting Power of 60% or less as Dropout Factories

5. How Many Dropout Factories Are There?

6. Where Are The Nation’s Dropout Factories Located?
About Half are Located in Northern, Midwestern and Western Cities
The rest are primarily found throughout the South and Southwest

7. Counties with 1 or more weak promoting power high schools (gray shading) and counties with 5 or more weak promoting power high schools (black shading),

8. Top 10 States with the Largest Number of Dropout Factories
Rank
Nationally
Florida
Texas
Georgia
New York
California
South Carolina
Michigan
North Carolina
Ohio
Illinois
1,827
208
190
131
124
103 91 89 74 70 62 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

9. Top 10 States with the Largest Concentration of Dropout Factories
Total Number of High Schools
State
Rank
South Carolina
Florida
Georgia
Nevada
North Carolina
Mississippi
Arizona
Alaska
Hawaii
Tennessee
178
416
298 56
315
238
198 63 39
274 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Number of Dropout Factories
% of High Schools that are Dropout Factories 91
208
131 17 74 55 45 13
51%
50%
44%
30%
23%
21%
20%

10. School Districts with the Largest Number of Dropout Factories

11. Who Attends Dropout Factories?
Students who live in Poverty
Minority Students

12. Dropout Factories and Minority Concentration

13. Percent of Minority Students Attending Dropout Factories

17. Poverty and Dropout Factories

18. Concentrated Poverty

20. What Causes a High School to be a Dropout Factory?
Concentrated Poverty is the key driver
But Controlling for Poverty, Minority Concentration, School Size, Student-Teacher Ratio, and Urban Location also play roles.

21. The Greatest Proximate Cause is that there is a fundamental Miss-Match between the Number of Students in Need of Academic and Social Supports in a High School and the Human Resources and Know How Available to Help

22. The Educational Challenge Faced by Dropout Factories
Philadelphia Case Study-High Poverty Neighborhood High Schools vs Selective Admission Magnets

27. Targeting Resources and Know How to End the Dropout Crisis
Case Study-African American Males

29. Which High Schools Do African American Males Dropout From?
80% of African Americans are attend Public High School in 16 states
In these 16 states there are roughly 2400 high schools where the promoting power for African American Males is less than 65%

30. Cont.
These 2400 High School produce 90% of the African American Male Dropouts in the 16 states are about 75% of the nation’s African American Male Dropouts

31. Cont. About Half are Dropout Factories
The Other Half are Grad Gap Schools
The Number of High Schools per state ranges from 65 in New Jersey to 266 in Texas

32. This is a Solvable Number
It is within our Capacity to Transform the Nation’s Dropout Factories and Grad Gap High Schools
In So Doing we can Transform the Nation

33. The Consequences of Under-Education
A new high school dropout in 2000 had less than a 50% chance of getting a job
That job earned less than ½ of what the same job earned 20 years ago
Lack of education is ever more strongly correlated with welfare dependency and incarceration
Some U.S. jobs cannot be filled by U.S. trained skilled employees
Three reasons why we should care about this:
Social and economic justice—50 years after Brown vs Board, we still have what amounts to educational apartheid.
Worse in todays economy (slide)
Over the last decade, prison enrollments tripled, with largest increases for high school dropouts
Funding for jails increased 600% while funding for schools increased 25%
More than 50% of inmates are illiterate
40% of juvenile offenders have learning disabilities never identified in school
Incarceration and other dropout costs pose a large fiscal burden on the nation
Squandering the potential and severely limiting life chances of too many young people.
Better educating our nation’s young people, especially those from poverty and minority backgrounds, is simply the right thing to do. It is what we must do to raise the quality of life and elicit the best from our youth, ourselves, and our nation as a whole.

34. Benefits > Costs
A recent study finds that our nation can recoup 45 billion dollars in lost tax revenues, health care expenditures, and social service outlays if we cut the number of high school dropouts in half (Levin et. al, 2007).
If we cut the number by 20%, eminently doable, we recoup 18million. Looking at now a 2billion investment—18:1 return.
These are funds that could be put toward reducing the national deficit and reinvested in ways that secure, strengthen, and extend our economy and civil society.

35. Failure to Succeed
Enter High School with Below Grade Level Skills or Poor Attendance Habits or struggle with the transition to high school
Miss 20 or more days of the 9th grade, sometimes 10 of the first 30 days
Fail Two or More and often Nearly All of their 1st Semester Courses.
Do Not Earn Enough Credits to be Promoted to the 10th Grade
Repeat 9th Grade, Fail Again
Eventually Dropout, Perhaps after a Brief Transfer to another school

36. Failure to Succeed Dropouts
Are Easily Identifiable Using Data Routinely Collected by Schools
Can be Identified a Key Junctures of Secondary School When Their Odds for Success are About to Take a Turn for the Worse
Often Persist in School for a Long Time before Dropping Out, Despite Years of Struggles

37. Chicago On-Track Indicator
Earn 5 Credits in 9th Grade
Have no More than one semester F in a core course
On Track Students 3.5 Times more likely to Graduate
Better Predictor than Test Scores or background characteristics
Some Students with High Test Scores Fall off Track in 9th Grade, Some Students with Low Test Scores stay on Track
9th Grade Experience is Key

38. Philadelphia 8th Grade Indicators
8th Graders who Attend less than 80% of the Time and/or Fail Math and/or Fail English make up 54% of Dropouts
Students Who Do Not Have 8th Grade Indicators but have to Repeat 9th Grade make up 22% of Dropouts
Only 23% of Dropouts Do Not Have a 8th Grade or 9th Grade Indicator

39. Effective Intervention and Prevention
Follow the Public Health Model

40. Comprehensive Prevention Model
Type of Intervention
Portion of Failure to Succeed Students Addressed
Resource Needs
School-wide Preventative
65-75%
Maybe able to Re-Organizes Existing resources
Targeted
15-25%
Additional Resources Typically Needed
Intensive
5-10%
Partners with Resources Needed

41. Talent Development High Schools Reform Components
School Organization
Ninth Grade Academy, Teams, Career Academies, Block Schedule
Curriculum/Instruction
Double & Triple Dose
Active Instruction
Freshman Seminar
Integrated Career Themes
Staff Support
Leadership
Planning & Coaching

45. We Now Know That…
Sustained implementation of a strong, comprehensive intervention at the high school level, with particular emphasis in the ninth grade, results in improvements in:
Climate
Attendance
Achievement
Course Passing
Grade Promotion
Career/College Ready
Graduation
Third, we know better, so we must do better.

46. MDRC Evaluation
Using an unusually rigorous research method, MDRC studied the impact of Talent Development across five high schools in Philadelphia over a five-year period. MDRC’s analysis compared gains in student engagement, achievement, and attainment in the Talent Development high schools to a set of match control schools in the same district. Their study found that:
“Talent Development produced substantial gains in attendance, academic course credits earned (particularly in algebra), and promotion rates during students’ first year of high school.” p.ES-1
“The improvements in credits earned and promotion rates for ninth-graders were sustained as students moved through high school.” p.ES-1
“The pattern of results in this report stands out from other research on high school reforms because the impacts are consistently positive across several outcomes, they emerged in the first year of implementation, they are sustained for successive cohorts of students, and they were found across five high schools,”

47. Good News
Manageable number of schools and we can locate the bulk of the work
Converging discourse on what needs to be done
Increasing level of know how
Leadership and support
Personalization
Relevance
High Standards
Supports
Flexible Time, Instructional Strategies and Resources
Partnerships
Job Embedded Professional Development

48. Challenges
Transforming low performing high schools and systems is not easy, fast, or cheap

49. Not Easy
Need comprehensive and systemic approach to avoid isolated efforts that exacerbate inequity
Consider multiple approaches as appropriate to context
Develop and scale-up technical and human supports for transformation
Align federal, state, district, and school-based efforts

51. Not Fast
“The trick is how to sustain interest in a reform that requires a generation to complete.”
Debbie Meyer
NCLB & States must acknowledge reality and progress using multiple indicators

52. Not Cheap Continue and expand public and private funding
Institutionalize targeted resources
Title I
Perkins
Dedicated Fund for Low Performing High Schools

53. Coming Soon…
Bingaman $2.5 Billion High School Reform/Dropout Reduction Bill