The Dropout Problem

Prior to my retirement last December, I spent twenty years working as a guidance counselor in a high school in the Bronx. During that time, I spoke to thousands of parents, mostly at family conferences in my office, but also at various school wide parent meetings. In all that time, I never encountered a parent who wasn’t keenly interested in his or her child’s success. Yet, using high school graduation as the gauge of success, most of those parents have been disappointed. The high school graduation rate in the five boroughs in New York City hovers around 50%; unfortunately, the success rate in the Bronx is much lower, especially among young males.

These are alarming figures. How can serious educators justify the huge expenditure on education when most of the students are failing? Arne Duncan, President-elect Obama’s nominee for Education Secretary, was chosen for the position because he has been confronting the epidemic of student failure in the troubled school system in Chicago, with some success. However, nobody expects the federal government to have more than a marginal impact on school improvement. Washington can, of course, make suggestions and increase the low level of federal education spending, but real change has to come at the local level.

Starting about seven years ago, the New York State Board of Regents is testing a very interesting educational proposition: If you increase the educational expectations from students, this will result in better academic performance by the kids. Expect more and you will get more seems to work in many areas of human endeavor, so why not apply it to the classroom. The old competency tests in the various school subjects, commonly called the RCT’s, have been replaced by the more rigorous Regents examinations. Now, students have to pass challenging State examinations in English, World History, American History, science and mathematics before they can be awarded a high school diploma anywhere in New York State.

The worthy goal is to raise the bar for high school graduation. No serious educator would ever argue against the importance of insisting on high expectations for students at every education level. However, we need to tease out what we mean when we advocate raising standards by making the school curriculum more demanding. Some inner-city, at-risk students come to high school with poor reading and math skills. Many are three or more years behind the appropriate grade levels in reading and numeracy skills. There is a danger that we turn them off school completely by pretending that they are not away behind in basic skills. You end up teaching difficult algebraic computations to students who have not mastered their multiplication tables. A friend of mine, a devoted chemistry teacher, told me that most of the students in one of his classes were completely lost and, consequently, often disruptive while he was teaching a lesson. We expect students who may not be able to spell chemistry to deal with challenging abstract concepts.

High schools are judged largely by their graduation rates. So, predictably, there is an inordinate amount of time devoted to preparing for the State examinations. Has this stress on test results encouraged students or teachers to focus more on learning and understanding the subject matter in the various subjects? Or have the classrooms come more and more to resemble “exam factories,” where there is little attention paid, for instance, to developing a student’s critical abilities, not to mention promoting a love of learning? The result is that teachers scramble to push their students to meet these new requirements because they are largely judged on their students’ exam results. Still, the high school graduation rates in New York City have remained rather static.

The Bloomberg administration has moved away from the model of large high schools, which traditionally served most New York City students. They are seen as too impersonal, lacking the individual touch, which is especially important for at-risk students. The downside of this approach is that small schools find it very difficult to offer a wide curriculum. With limited staff, how can the high achievers be offered an opportunity to study physics or calculus or AP English? Also, sharing gym and cafeteria facilities with other schools in the same building has created planning and logistical problems in some high schools.

I started by talking about parents’ wishes for their children’s success in school. Their desire to see their kids do well is certainly a positive factor for any young person. Many, however, do not themselves have a high school diploma; some are emigrants who speak poor English. A majority of the students come from one-parent households, where often the mother is working long hours in a low-paying job, barely meeting her monthly bills. How can she be expected provide the encouragement that is so vital or the support with homework assignments?

Of course, this is not just an American problem. When I visited Australia last year, I spent a long time talking to a young doctor, a friend of my brother’s family, who was working with a community of aborigines. Her stories of poor school attendance and achievement mirrored my experiences in the South Bronx. We ended up discussing the occasional success stories, trying to identify what these students had that made them different. That will be the subject of another blog.