Strategies and Successes in School Dropout Prevention
A Forum — October 6, 1995
The-nine-year old National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University in South Carolina was formed to help answer this question. The Center is a dues-paying, membership organization with over 3,000 members. Dr. Jay Smink, Executive Director of The National Dropout Prevention Center, described the Center's mission as addressing the issue of high school dropouts and increasingly of middle school, and even elementary school, dropouts. (Students typically drop out at the ages of 15, 16 or 17 depending on the legal requirements in their district. The exception is pregnant young women for whom there is no legal minimum age for dropping out of school.) The Center is concerned with identifying the characteristics that make a young person "at-risk" of dropping out of school in order to begin prevention efforts as early as possible. The Center provides:
- A data-base through the mainframe at Clemson University. The data-base includes both research and informational documents and examples of dropout prevention programs. The research complements ERIC and other data-bases, which do not always have information on dropout prevention. The data-base includes over 600 models of dropout prevention programs in all states, in urban, suburban and rural areas and at the elementary, middle and high school levels. For example, if you wanted information on an urban, middle school program, the data base might provide 20 examples, a few of which would meet your local needs.
- "Action Research" demonstration projects. The Center has just completed a three-year demonstration with several projects designed to integrate academic and vocational education for at-risk youth.
- Professional Development and Technical Assistance. Professional development services include one summer institute and two national conferences per year, one of which is always in South Carolina for the Southeastern states. Individual forums are also provided on requested subjects. Recently, the requests have been primarily for forums on service learning, mentoring, tutoring, linking academic and vocational education, and instruction in Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences."
In 1993, according to Census data, over 12 million persons over 18-years-old had less than a 9th-grade education and 20% of adults over the age of 25 had not completed high school. Dr. Smink warned that Census data can be misleading, especially if the numbers report only the number of dropouts each year. The numbers in a 1994 report of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) are much higher, indicating that 3.4 million persons between the ages of 16 and 24 in 1993 dropped out of school before earning a high school diploma. With an overhead depicting 80 school buses, Dr. Smink showed the number of students in the nation who drop out of school each day. Also according to NCES, whites make up the largest percentage (52.9%) of all dropouts (black, non-Hispanic, 15.6%; Hispanic, 29.3%). A higher percentage of minority students drop out based on their total numbers, but students from minority groups do not make up the largest numerical dropout group ("The Journal of At-Risk Issues").
Additional statistics indicate the high cost to society of school dropouts. Eighty-two percent of America's prisoners are high school dropouts ("The Demographics of School Reform," 1990). Each year's class of dropouts will cost the country over $200 billion during their lifetimes in lost earnings and unrealized tax revenue (Catterall, 1985).
Dr. Smink described at-risk situations, emphasizing that the young person is not at-risk, but only in one or more at-risk situations. At-risk situations can exist in communities with a high incidence of criminal activities or drug abuse and a prevalence of poverty and single-parent households. Students are also in at-risk situations if they feel disconnected to school, have learning disabilities, become pregnant, or use drugs. "A specific situation may not actually lead to dropping out, but sets of situations appear to identify the potential to do so." ("The Journal of At-Risk Issues")
Some student behaviors are more likely precursors of dropping out of school than others. For example, there is a strong correlation between repeated school tardiness and absenteeism and dropping out, while participation in extra-curricular activities tends to lead to staying in school because it provides students with another "hook" if they reject the academic side of school. Low basic skills, being over-age for one's grade, social isolation, frequent moves to different schools, deficient support systems, siblings who have dropped out, and low socio-economic levels also correlate with a potential to leave school early.
Policy decisions can have important effects on the incidence of dropping out. Dr. Smink indicated several widely used policies that directly result in young people dropping out of school. These include: out-of-school suspensions; graduation requirements; no opportunities to make up work; no summer school; automatic failure if more than ten days are missed; grade retention. Some policies may need to be changed, others are based on real needs and could be adapted to prevent dropping out. For example, students could receive in-school suspension or have strict requirements to keep up with work while out of school. In another example, summer, alternative or Saturday school could be used to make up work to avoid the necessity to retain students in the same grade.
The National Dropout Prevention Center uses the following techniques to address the needs of youth at-risk of dropping out of school: school restructuring, prevention, mediation, intervention and recovery. Following is a description of each of these techniques:
- Restructuring schools so that they meet the needs of the learner is essential to successful and lasting education reform. Restructuring demands a match between the needs of the students and the characteristics, climate, and practices of the settings in which the student must function or receive services.
- Prevention includes approaches that anticipate, forestall, or deal with cognitive, social or personal problems before they irreparably impair a student's ability to perform.
- Mediation is the process of providing an educational environment that ensures success for all students from pre-school through the 12th grade. Mediation strategies are innovative curricular, instructional, and other school experiences designed to foster student engagement in learning. Mediation is what you do before you "remediate" -- it means "Doing It Right the First Time." Mediation and school restructuring are related: both rely on a systemic approach, rather than a huge number of unconnected programs with only short-term funding.
- Intervention is designed to interrupt or modify academic, school, or personal problems that are negatively affecting a student's performance.
The National Dropout Prevention Center considers the following criteria important for the success of dropout prevention programs:
Professional Development -- Teacher Education programs do not usually equip teachers to work with young people in at-risk situations, so additional training is needed.
Raising Reading Levels -- One example is the Reading Recovery program developed in New Zealand and brought to the United States by Dr. Carol Lyons of Ohio State University two decades ago. Reading Recovery targets the poorest reading 25% of first grade readers for intensive reading intervention lasting 16 weeks. While expensive, this program pays off: Raised reading levels have been shown for up to five years after the program.
Linking social services with schools helps the students and their families with a range of needs. Health needs addressed include medical, dental, social, and mental health and assistance with proper diet and nutrition. Florida refers to its exemplary work in this area as "full service schools." Washington State and Idaho have similar "case management" approaches.
Different Learning Styles -- for example, 1) the seven intelligences identified by Howard Gardner. Dr. Gardner doesn't ask "How smart are you?" he asks "How are you smart?" 2) Dunn and Dunn's "21 Elements Critical to Learning" -- elements that each individual must have to optimize learning (some people like to work under bright lights, some not; some people nibble while they work, others don't).
Mentoring -- a relatively inexpensive strategy, since it involves volunteers, which reaps substantial rewards in part because it convinces students that someone really cares whether they complete school or not and really cares about them. Illinois is a state that has done a lot of work on tutoring and mentoring.
Peer-to-Peer Counseling -- seeing students as resources for each other, not just as problems; Service Learning also looks at students as resources.
Alternative Schools increase the individual attention for each student and show higher test scores, higher rates of college attendance and lower dropout rates than traditional schools.
Parental involvement -- important, but true involvement is rare.
Discusion Period
The discussion period provided an opportunity to share additional promising practices:
Preventing dropping out due to parenthood -- A school in the Bronx, for example, has daycare on site. Many companies now have similar programs. Two thoughts on this issue were expressed by the Forum participants: 1) girls are woefully unaware of their own bodies and reproduction, supporting the need for further education and 2) does providing too many services create an incentive for early childbearing? Dr. Smink agreed with the need for more education and indicated that the question of services encouraging early childbearing depends on personal perspective.
Peer mediation and conflict resolution are among the solutions to problems of teen truancy and preferable to using the juvenile courts, which Dr. Smink feels puts an undue burden on the court system and lets schools off the hook
Incentives for principals and teachers to keep students in school -- The state of Texas is using monetary incentives, more money if the dropout rate is reduced and less if it goes up. However, in general, where no teacher and principal incentives exist for changing the system in order to retain students, student-based incentives are bound to fail. For example, a policy of denying driver's licenses to drop-outs resulted in short-term returns to school (in West Virginia; Florida and Texas had similar programs) before students got discouraged with the same old system and left again. In schools everywhere, some teachers and principals actually prefer that disruptive or low-achieving students leave.
School-to-Work -- A powerful strategy for reducing dropout levels, school-to-work components significantly enhance dropout prevention programs even for students too young to work who are made more aware of their future work opportunities.
High standards are a necessary step for all education and training; however, they will increase the drop-out rate if not accompanied by restructuring and mediation. A combination of restructuring and increased school-to-work opportunities can assist schools in raising standards without losing students.