Stop treating dismal graduation rates like a hot potato; all involved need to bite into the challenge
The children deserve better. The taxpayers are entitled to more. Society needs dramatically improved results. Everybody agrees this situation cannot continue.

And so the problem of staggering high school dropout rates, acute in Detroit but not exclusive to the city, can no longer be passed around like a game of hot potato. It's time for all the stakeholders -- and who isn't? -- to take a bite. Otherwise, we will continue to spend money without solving problems that just cost more money, because kids who quit school are the most likely to have children they can't afford and to end up in prison.

Think of Detroit Public Schools as a $1.3-billion enterprise and ask yourself: What enterprise would tolerate the utter failure of 22 of its 27 divisions, and for how long, without an urgent overhaul? Yet students in 22 of Detroit's 27 high schools are failing to meet minimum state benchmarks for progress. Three-quarters of the students who start high school don't finish.
And it has been going on for a long time. The social costs are beyond computing. There's no point anymore in trying to figure out who's responsible for DPS sliding into this mess. What's needed are urgent resolve and engagement. Michigan cannot afford thousands of undereducated, unskilled people in its largest city. The children entering the DPS system deserve to be on a track to productive citizenship.

The sound of change can be heard, at least, in DPS Superintendent Connie Calloway's candor about the district's failings and her call for smaller, themed high schools to replace the chronic failures.

But Calloway needs parental involvement, staff support and community allies.

Many potential allies met late last month at a two-day dropout-prevention summit cosponsored by the America's Promise Alliance, the organization founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, which chose Detroit to kick off a series of 50 summits nationwide on dropout prevention.
Summits aren't a solution, but they can explore policy initiatives for schools and community groups to push forward together.

Four that would help in Detroit and other high-dropout districts:

• Managing teacher morale: Calloway could blaze a trail if she agreed to bring the Detroit Federation of Teachers to the table now, at the outset of change. Teachers are the foot soldiers in this struggle. Surely they would all rather be working in successful schools. They have legitimate issues to raise, just as Calloway has legitimate concerns about losing certified and nationally recognized teachers to other districts or states.

• Put a spotlight on attendance: Starting in middle school, it's possible to spot a likely dropout just by tracking attendance patterns. Eighth-graders who miss more than five weeks of school have a 75% chance of dropping out of high school, but too many absences go unnoticed. Computerized attendance gives schools the technology to do better at tracking students, and more resources must also be invested in tracking them down when they are missing. Education officials need to devise a coordinated way to use attendance data to identify students headed for trouble before they hit high school. The data also will show which of the middle schools feeding Detroit's high schools are failing students, too.

• Personalizing freshman year: Ninth grade is critical. Students who start high school having failed math or English in middle school are especially at risk of dropping out. High school principals should be empowered to customize ninth-grade academics, providing early remedial intervention as part of a protective support ring. Ideally, a mentor -- a student, graduate, parent or staff member -- would be assigned, on the promise to help the student complete that critical first year. Sound outlandishly costly? Remember the cost of losing the kid to the streets.

One D, the umbrella group for six leading civic organizations in the region, will unveil an action plan at the Detroit Regional Chamber conference later this month on Mackinac Island based on findings from the dropout summit. It should include nontraditional engagement with students. What if, for example, local companies chose a ninth-grade class to adopt at one troubled school for a year? The relationship could be as simple as pairing students with adult mentors or committing to help educate students for future job opportunities.

• Expanded early college enrollment: According to a study by the Bill Gates Foundation, 75% of ninth- and tenth-grade dropouts blamed a lack of motivation and boredom for quitting school. What better incentives to offer than a chance to jump-start their earnings potential? Dropouts, on average, earn, $9,200 less per year than high school graduates.

Michigan has a number of early-college high schools up and running. They allow students either to take a college level course or simultaneously to earn a diploma and an associate's degree.
Increasing partnership between school districts and community colleges should be a legislative priority.

None of these ideas alone can move the needle. They are starting points. But nothing gets started at all without a broad-based commitment to end one of Michigan's greatest and most costly failings.

Labels: Educational_Preparedness, InTheNews