Photo courtesy of Harlem Link Charter School

When Dropout Nation met with Steve Evangelista earlier this year, the Teach-for-America alum-turned-charter school founder was struggling with the news that one of his former pupils during his teaching days had landed in Rykers Island, New York City’s notorious city jail. For the co-director of the Harlem Link Charter School, the news led him to ask some important questions about how teachers and schools could build long-term connections that can keep students on the track to graduation and to fulfilling their economic and social destinies. His efforts was profiled on the Dropout Nation Podcast on building long-lasting connections between students and teachers.

This week, Evangelista offers some more thoughts and observations on what schools and teachers must do to keep kids from dropping out. As you read it, consider what more can be done in making the relationships between schools and the students they serve more meaningful.

Until we decide as a nation that we are going to ask ourselves tough questions about where our bright young pupils wind up five, ten and fifteen years after they pass through our classrooms –- and act courageously to address the shortcomings we will inevitably find –- educators will continue shortchanging the families we purport to serve.

As the cofounder and co-director of a charter elementary school in Harlem that only this summer graduated its first class of fifth graders, I think about these tough questions as often as I can these days.  With school back in full swing, it’s easy to focus only on the 300 charges in front of me, but a recent incident brought questions about the future back to the forefront.

The chaos of dismissal in the first two weeks was winding down.  School had been open for us for a week and we had our basic routines down, but the three district schools with whom we share a building were only just beginning their year, adding a new layer of complexity to our dismissal.  Still, within 15 minutes of dismissal each bus had the right students, every child had been picked up, the partner after-school program’s escorts had checked their lists twice and were on their way with their small groups of kids.  So when my co-director came to me that late afternoon and said, “There’s something you’ve got to see on the fourth floor,” I thought, “Oh, no, and I thought I could finally get some paperwork done!”

When I got up to the fourth floor, where our two fifth grade classes are located, she pointed the way to one of those rooms and I saw what she wanted me to see: three sixth graders, sitting around the table with a social worker and a teacher.  After their first day of school at their new middle school downtown, Qiana, Mark and Ashanti had come back to Harlem Link because they just couldn’t stay away.  In my letter to them as part of our first graduating fifth grade class this summer, I promised them that we would have our first annual reunion in October 2012, that we would continue to support them and be part of their lives, and never lose touch with them.  As our social worker said, “They walked right in like they own the place.”  And I responded, “You know what?  They do!”

The rapid return of our first few alumni – and the certitude that they and their classmates will continue to return – reminded me of the Roseto Effect, with which Malcolm Gladwell opens his recent book, Outliers.  The 1966 Roseto study describes two communities with the same diet, exercise and physical environment but with different patterns of community interaction – and radically different heart disease survival rates.  Researchers concluded that members of a community confer a significant physical health benefit upon themselves by spending quality time together, supporting each other, caring about each other.

The smiling faces of Mark, Qiana and Ashanti, a couple of inches taller, but sitting around a table in their old classroom like they were still in fifth grade, also brought to mind another famous author writing about 2,300 years earlier.  Aristotle described the four causes of any object, the most metaphysical being the final cause – the thing’s purpose or reason for existing.  The final cause of a chair is to allow people to sit.  The final cause of our school is to graduate scholars empowered to take an active role in their own learning and citizens who are part of a safe, supportive learning community.  The three alumni reminded me of that final cause.

I’ve always believed that it’s only possible to create an environment where powerful relationships between students and teachers develop and where students are engaged in productive learning at school when there is coherent community agreement on the final cause of education.  Where the principles of community health, as it were, apply to the very purpose of schooling.  That’s why, when I started teaching in the 1990s I was surprised at how little agreement there is on such a basic question as the final cause of a school.  I’m not talking about agreement at the federal level, or even the state level.  Or district level.  I’m talking about how little agreement there often is about the purpose of schooling within an individual school.

It’s the popular fashion today to say that all the problems in schools can be fixed by having great teachers.  I discovered early in my teaching career, in my futile attempt to become one of those great teachers that I could only do so much by myself.  This concept of community health, of agreement on the final cause, is an essential ingredient to the existence of great teachers.  A logical conclusion that should be obvious to anyone who has observed schools in a variety of settings is that a great teacher at your school might not be a great teacher at my school, and vice versa.  A great teacher is not so great if he or she is not swimming in the same direction as the rest of the community.

So educators: what happens to students ten and fifteen years after they leave your care?  Can you answer that question?  If I went up to any random individual who works at your school with you, what would that person say?  That’s my test for whether your school community’s final cause facilitates long-term relationships between students and teachers.  Unfortunately, given my experience and knowing the pressures and the direction of education reform in our country, I would wager that in most at-risk communities school staff would have a hard time answering the question.

I know that we are on the right track at Harlem Link, because when Mark, Qiana and Ashanti came storming in like they owned the place, one of the first things they asked was, “Are we really having our first annual reunion in 2012?”  These three students, and their many classmates with the same attitude, understand that our school’s community goal is focused on their long term success.  Would that we had some kind of national agreement on the point.

Disclosure: All Voices of the Dropout Nation commentary are opinions of the writers and not of Dropout Nation, The RiShawn Biddle Consultancy or RiShawn Biddle. If you want to make your voice heard, sent your commentary to rbiddle-at-dropoutnation.net. Dropout Nation reserves the right to edit all commentary for style, clarity and standards.

The real question isn't about the effectiveness of vouchers, but about assuring every child gets a chance at a high-quality education that gets each one on the path to success in their life. (Photo courtesy of Viewimages)

NEWS AND COMMENTARY FROM AROUND the dropout nation. Updates are marked with an *:

• Widespread academic failure — on an international scale: Last week, during a debate with immigration skeptic Norman Matloff, he disputed my citing of PISA and TIMMS international testing results, which showed American students scoring in the 95th percentile — the nation’s best students — trailing their peers in ten countries. He continued arguing that the academic underperformance was merely limited to an “underclass” of poor students, even though these are unlikely to be the poorest students and more likely to be the product of middle-class households. Now, at Edspresso, Vicki Murray and Evelyn Stacey of the Pacific Research Institute offer more evidence that academic failure and underperformance extends beyond the poorest Americans. Half the students at one in every ten middle-class California schools, for example, are failing the state’s CST standards test.
• The source of academic struggle: EducationNews.org’s Michael Shaughnessy interviews George Leef, who had written a piece earlier this week on the woeful math instruction training at America’s education schools. Leef offers another reason why many teachers have become inept at teaching math: “Many students grow up with teachers who have been trained to think that feeling good is more important than getting correct answers.” And the administrators and the parents sometimes engage in the same garbage. Why does anyone think social promotion — moving kids from grade to grade despite failing school — continues to exist despite evidence that it is an abject failure?
  
• The value of vouchers: Edsize’s Leo Casey accuses voucher supporters of cherry-picking studies that support their positions. Jay Greene responds by listing a series of different studies proving the value of the school choice plans. Greg Forster joins the fray by offering the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation’s latest report on the Ohio voucher program. Andrew Coulson also joins in on the fun. All of this began with Greene demanding that Casey and his allies in the Broader, Bolder Coalition submit their concept for school reform to major study.
• At least the argument isn’t pointless like the debate over whether it is proper for the latest book released by Fordham to have “Paternalism” in the title. Or the debate among priests over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
  
• And the usefulness of national standards: Neil McCluskey of Cato calls out Fordham and Mike Petrilli for not responding to McCluskey’s question (and that of Eduwonk’s Andy Rotherham) as to whether the political forces at the state level that often collide over development of curriculum standards won’t rear themselves during the development of national standards. Petrilli responds. All I’ll say is if you think the battle between advocates of phonics and supporters of whole language was rather nasty, wait until USDOE tries to develop standards for history. The NAACP, La Raza and the Knights of Columbus will get into this, along with the NEA, the AFT and the other usual suspects.
  
• Here is the REL WestEd study of dropouts and the revolving door at San Bernardino schools mentioned on Dropout Nation last week. Read. Think. Take action.
  
• But will they keep them there: Schools in Texas are trying to get dropouts to re-enroll in school. But they have until the end of September to make it happen. Or else they won’t get any money for them. Yes, it is always about the money.
  

The Town & Country Building is tackily tasty. But the school district isn't. (Courtesy of Agilitynut.com)

One wouldn’t think this town, two hours north of New York City, would be swamped with a dropout crisis. As a district bordering between farming country and suburbia, just 32 percent of the Liberty Central Schools District’s enrollment are Latino, black or Native American; the remaining 68 percent are white.

The district and its only high school, however, is as much a dropout factory as the collection of high schools that make up the far larger — and more diverse — Gotham system.

Fifty-six percent of the freshmen entering high school in the Liberty district actually graduated in four years, according to the New York State Education Department. Even worse, the problem isn’t simply among the few students with disabilities, whose graduation rate is an abysmal 21 percent. A mere 63 percent of Liberty’s freshmen in the general population garnered a sheepskin; two out of every five students either likely dropped out, failed to garner enough credits for graduation (which will likely lead them to leave without a diploma) or transferred to other school districts (from which they will likely drop out).

This isn’t a new trend. Just 56 percent of the 8th-graders who made up the district’s class of 2005 two years ago actually graduated in five years, according to an analysis of data submitted to the U.S. Department of Education; a mere 53 percent of the district’s freshmen walked away with a sheepskin in four years. This despite the fact that a not-so-great 74 percent of students were promoted from 8th-to-12th grade during that period.

What’s wrong with Liberty? The problems begin early. Just 13 percent of 4th graders scored in the Level 4 (r top percentile) range on the state’s standardized test, while 41 percent of Liberty’s 4th-graders had scores in the lowest levels of the test; the statewide average is, respectively, 21 percent and 41 percent. Twenty-one percent of Liberty’s 4th-graders scored in the lowest two levels of the math portion of the exam, higher than the 17 percent statewide average. Meanwhile, 64 percent of the district’s 8th-graders scored in the bottom two levels of the state’s English exam; only a merely attrocious 53 percent of the state’s 8th graders overall scored that low.

These are students woefully prepared to stay in school, much less graduate. Proving once again that the ills of dropout nation aren’t limited to the heart of Urban America.

THE PRICE OF DROPPING OUT: A white male dropout who lands in prison has a one-in-six chance of landing in prison, according to Princeton University researcher Bruce Western. A black male dropout has a three-in-five chance of heading into prison. No matter the disparity, it's disheartening. (Photo courtesy of Adobe Systems.)

Reports and observations inside — and outside — the dropout nation. Updated throughout the day:

1. Doesn’t get it: Joseph Brown of the Tampa Tribune, horrified about Florida’s low graduation rate for black males (as analyzed by the Schott Foundation), argues that dropouts “fail to see the connection between education and a good job” and “apparently neither do their parents.” He isn’t completely wrong about that. However, Brown doesn’t address the underlying causes of the dropout crisis that have little to do with parents or their children, including low-quality public school curricula and teachers that aren’t well-prepared to teach in urban school systems.
2. And sometimes, parents can be the problem: Education officials in Georgia finally did something right and reformed its woeful math curriculum standards. Achieve Inc. rates the standards among the highest of the “early adopter” states it is monitoring as part of its American Diploma Project. And now the standards must be applied to 9th-grade students. So what are suburban Atlanta parents doing, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? Complaining (naturally) about the fact that their children are failing exams based on those new standards. They’re likely worried that the kids won’t get into the University of Georgia, the college of first choice for most Peach State parents. What they should be doing is complaining about the quality of instruction in their school districts. And yes, get their kids some tutoring.
3. The end of old-school black politics: Over the past few years, I have discussed the growing conflict between old-school black politicians — who emerged out of the Civil Rights era of the 1960s by parlaying political machines, race-baiting, appeals to black pride and doling out welfare to poor constituents — and an iconoclastic new generation of young black politicians — middle-class, highly-educated, unburdened by the memories of Jim Crow segregation — who are looking to deal with the woeful economic and social status of their communities. Now, Matt Bai profiles the divide in The New York Times Magazine. The real chasm between the two generations, from where I sit, will really manifest themselves in discussions about improving urban schools, largely because they are largely-controlled by old-school black politicians and school officials who are less than attentive to their woeful performance.
4. No wonder why D.C. residents want self-government: The Washington Post notes the latest round of shenanigans surrounding re-authorization of the District’s five-year-old voucher program. The city’s mayor, Adrian Fenty — once an opponent of the program — must “clearly explain” to Congress how the voucher program is helping children escape the city’s atrocious dropout factories and academic failure mills at the elementary- and junior high school level in order for the program to survive another year.
5. They’re the tops — but not outside America: At Eduwonkette, skoolboy checks out Fordham’s Educational Olympics and notes the dismal performance of America’s top students versus the rest of the world. Ten countries have top high school sophomores that perform better on the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) than our nation’s top 10th-graders. Not good at all.
6. Can the kids be taught? Ken DeRosa and Charles Murray (he of the infamous Bell Curve and more recent inanities about education) have a back-and-forth on teaching students of modest IQ levels.
7. Teach For America and its professional development: Alexander Russo reports on the alternative teacher training group’s response to critics about its support for new teachers.

It shouldn't take a cop to bring a kid back into school. We must all do our part to keep the kids in their seats and ready to learn.

Thinking — and writing — about the dropout nation. Updated throughout the day:

1. Figuring out ways to keep them in school: Or at least that is the plan for school districts in Montgomery, Ala., Skokie, Illinois, and California’s San Bernardino County. All the plans, however, seem like rehashes of earlier regimes of bringing in police officers to ticket students and charging parents with failure to send their children to school. Not to say it doesn’t have some value. But the plans really should address the lack of academic rigor, the achievement gap issues and the other underlying factors that result in chronic truancy and eventually, leaving school without a sheepskin.
2. How about raising expectations for special ed students: That’s the argument made by Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute in his San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, in which he criticizes the Golden Gate City’s school officials for opposing a state requirement — dictated by the No Child Left Behind Act — that those students must take the state’s high school exit exam. Given that the test only quizzes students on 8th-grade math and need only to get 55-to-60 percent of the answers correct, all but the most developmentally-disabled special ed students can pass it with some extra tutoring and help from their teachers and schools. Given that 28 percent of special ed students eventually dropped out during the 2004-05 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education, wouldn’t it make sense to figure out a way to keep those students in school?
3. A GI Bill for K-12 students? That’s what David Kirkpatrick suggests in his latest column at EducationNews.org. And he notes that not only did the original GI Bill plan work, it didn’t bring additional federal regulations as opponents of the idea feared at the time. Perhaps it is time to create a federal voucher program and expand the level of federal funding to public charter schools.
4. Are you kidding me? The College Board — the folks, along with Educational Testing Services, behind the Scholastic Aptitude Test — will roll out a version of the PSAT in 2010 designed to test 8th-graders and get them into college prep programs early. L.A. Unified may actually offer the new PSAT to all 8th-graders once it’s unveiled. That’s great news, especially for talented young black males and females, both nationwide and in the City of Angels, who often get shunted aside from such programs despite their high intelligence. But a few folks, according to the Los Angeles Times, think the tests should be given far earlier in 6th grade. They may be right, but 8th-grade testing is a start.
5. Sometimes, Sol Stern needs to put down his pen: Kevin Carey gives the education policy legend the business for misusing the phrase “Lake Woebegon Effect” in his piece on New York’s math scores. My big issue with Stern on this one is more of the put-up-or-shut-up variety: He doesn’t offer any evidence of whether the students are progressing over time, simply comparing scores of whole grades of students — in this case, grade 3-through-8 — instead of, say doing a value-added time series in which he compares 5th grade student scores to their scores as 8th graders three years later. This method would likely give a better picture of how much of the test score improvement relates to the lowering of standards, natural cognitive growth as students or more effective instruction.
6. Think before you speak?: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes a state education department official to task for declaring in a deposition that a school curriculum without a science component is an “adequate education.”
7. What do Cheech and Chong and Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers have in common: According to Matthew Ladner, both are, umm, up in smoke.

A young black man with textbooks. Now, this is what we should all see. Photo courtesy of blacksgiveback.blogspot.com

The dropout nation at a glance. Updated throughout the day:

1. What shall be done with No Child Left Behind: Some such as Checker Finn of Fordham are arguiing for a major re-write of the law while Diane Ravitch — she of the Broader, Bolder Coalition — think it should probably be dumped altogether. Meanwhile Sol Stern argues that, instead of re-writing the law outright, it should essentially be strengthened to show which states are gaming the system by lowering standards. Feel free to read more of the debate at Newtalk.org.
2. Editor’s note: Ryan Hill of TEAM Schools argues that the gaming of the system by states exemplifies the need for national standards. I would generally agree. Except for this: If the federal government is already struggling to get all 50 states to comply with No Child’s goals — and that’s with a wide array of exemptions and allowances for missed deadlines thusfar — why would anyone think that it can go so far and actually enforce curriculum standards? And as we have seen in debates over phonics versus whole language and Reading First, a growing federal role will only mean additional battling over whose standards are best — leading to a set of curriculum rules that are as mushy as many of the standards at the state level.
3. It’s never about the teachers: At least that is the perspective of the piece written by California Federation of Teachers President Marty Hittelman, who mentions that California is among the last in school spending per student (even though California is also, by the way, the nation’s largest state and spends $40 billion annually on K-12) and argues that the allegedly low spending, along with the lack of librarians, are among the reasons why some 127,300 students in the state’s original Class of 2007  are failing to get their sheepskins. I must ask: What about, umm, high-quality instruction by high-quality teachers? Which may be obtained if the state’s rules governing teacher evaluations allowed for more stringent analysis of teacher competency.
4. Meanwhile the Golden State’s school superintendent, Jack O’Connell advocates for using data in solving the state’s dropout crisis. It would help if his department had a better relationship with the most powerful congressperson on education — California Congressman George Miller.
5. Not acceptable at any level: So says the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette about the spate of bad news about Indiana’s — and Indianapolis’ — low graduation rates.

Image courtesy of C'Ville Weekly

1. When civil rights groups get it wrong on education: Is access to a high-quality education a civil right? Depends on where you sit ideologically (personally, this libertarian thinks it isn’t necessarily so, but a public education system being funded with tax dollars should actually do the job and educate all students). But civil rights groups such as La Raza and the NAACP have long ago began bucking their ties to teachers’ unions and supporting the No Child Left Behind Act. Now, according to the New York Times, other groups are also doing the same, this time fighting with the NEA and AFT over a congressional bill aimed at weakening an accountability provision in the law.
2. Diane Ravitch and James Heckmann should know better: Essentially, that’s what Ken DeRosa concludes in his latest sharp criticism of the Broader, Bolder Coalition, the strange bedfellows group of conservative and left-leaning education policy stars demanding that the the kind of standards-and-accountability embedded in the No Child Left Behind Act ought to be abandoned because it blames schools for academic failure. This isn’t the first time he has claimed that the group ignores data that may not support their position.
3. Are teachers’ unions anti-teacher?: Larry Sands of the California Teachers Empowerment Network offers his own thoughts.
4. Meanwhile in my birth-state: New York is once again reeling from unrestrained spending and prospects of a recession, notes the Economist. The chances for comprehensive education reform in the state — whose legislature and new governor overturned a successful effort to reform how new teachers attain tenure — is about as likely as the city handing over Liberty Island to New Jersey.

"Play 01" by RiShawn Biddle

What’s going on inside — and outside — the dropout nation.

1. Grad rate inflation: One out of every three California freshmen who made up the state’s original Class of 2007 likely dropped out, according to the state Department of Education. Sure, nine percent of them are considered “completers” or having gained a GED or a certificate of completion of some kind. Either way, the reality is they are dropouts and haven’t gotten a high-quality education. Meanwhile one out of every four students in L.A. Unified’s original class of 2007 failed to graduate. Just 6.5 percent of the original class of 2007 at the Animo charter high school run by Green Dot schools — whose battles with L.A. Unified over the former’s expansion is legendary — dropped out. But for federal reporting purposes, those numbers are meaningless: Based on the federal government’s more-inflated graduation rate calculation, nearly 80 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated. How nice. The Mercury-News has more on this.
2. And for the Hoosiers out there: Here are the graduation rate stats for Indianapolis Public Schools and the state as a whole. Yes, the numbers are les miserables.
3. Meanwhile, Dan Weintraub explains in Education Next how the Terminator was laid low by the state’s powerful teachers’ unions. For Sherman Dorn, an apparent skeptic about the role of teachers’ unions in state policymaking, this may serve as another example of how teachers’ unions skillfully work the corridors of the nation’s statehouses.
4. Is improving the quality of America’s teaching corps the answer to improving education? I say it’s just one of the answers, but not the only one. And Mike Petrilli over at The Education Gadfly argues why it may not be the answer at all.
5. Intra-ed policy dust-up: EdSector’s Kevin Carey and Neil McCluskey at Cato trade shots over the latter’s most recent policy brief. Carey insists that McCluskey exemplifies that there may be a “libertarian conspiracy” to end the nation’s public education system. McCluskey accuses him of engaging in a smear campaign. I’m just going to let these guys argue among themselves.
6. Jay Greene explains why the No Child Left Behind Act isn’t, as opponents of the law claim, an unfunded mandate. Sample quote: “I do not believe that a single tenured teacher out of the more than 3 million teachers currently working in public schools has been fired, experienced a pay-cut, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned because of NCLB.” Good point.