Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education

Year: 2010


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Dropout Nation on Twitter

Dropout Nation on Twitter for 2010-09-19

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This is Dropout Nation America’s Truancy Problem The L.A. County Example #edreform #truancy # The Dropout Nation Podcast: Embracing a New Vision of #Parents in Education https://dropoutnation.net/?p=2677 #edreform #ParentPower #…

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Dropout Nation on Twitter

Dropout Nation on Twitter for 2010-09-18

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#edreform Lessons: No Tears for #Fenty (RT @AmSpec) #MichelleRhee #RSD # RT @Jkent695: This is Dropout Nation: America's #Truancy Problem: #dropouts #edreform # RT @gothamschools: Rise & Shine! The state…

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Dropout Nation on Twitter

Dropout Nation on Twitter for 2010-09-17

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RT @getschooled: The biggest obstacle to reform is often contracts with teacher's unions. #Teachers are heroes but the unions impede reform. # RT @getschooled: "dance of the lemons" = principals…

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school data This is Dropout Nation

This is Dropout Nation: America’s Truancy Problem: The L.A. County Example

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Two hundred seventy-two thousand Los Angeles County students were truant during the 2008-2009 school year. Let that sink in. Two hundred seventy-two thousand kids. That is 16 percent of all…

In L.A. County's San Gabriel Unified, students stay out more than they check in. (Photo courtesy of the San Gabriel Unified School District.)

Two hundred seventy-two thousand Los Angeles County students were truant during the 2008-2009 school year. Let that sink in. Two hundred seventy-two thousand kids. That is 16 percent of all the students attending schools in the heart of Southern California, or 1,509 students skipping school without an excuse every school day.

We know where many of these kids will end up: They will become high school dropouts. What is astounding is that thanks to California education officials and the state legislature, we even know the truancy rate at all. Most states are ignoring the importance of reporting credible, honest truancy numbers, leaving unaddressed a critical symptom of the nation’s dropout crisis.

Within the past five years, researchers such as Robert Balfanz have proven that truancy is one of the foremost symptoms of America’s educational crisis and a primary indicator of whether a student will drop out or graduate from school. As Balfanz, Lisa Herzog and Douglas Mac Iver pointed out in a 2007 study, a sixth-grader missing a fifth of the school year has just a 13 percent chance of graduating six years later. In elementary school, truancy is a sign of parenting issues. In later grades, truancy is an indicator that a child has given up on learning after years of poor teaching, lousy curricula and lack of engagement (and caring) by teachers and principals.

Yet, as with graduation rates a decade ago, states and school districts do an abysmal job of tracking truancy (and school attendance overall) and offers misleading statistics on the true size of the problem. California offers a decent start on how to solve the latter. But it will require better data standards and data systems to make real progress.

The problem starts with the statistics itself. Most states calculate attendance by dividing the total number of days missed by students by the total number of days they are supposed to attend (usually 180 days multiplied by enrollment). This metric, used largely for school funding, is great for district coffers. But it’s terrible for addressing truancy. Why? It hides the levels of truancy plaguing a school because it includes all unexcused absences, not just the set number of days under which a student is considered by law to be truant. Add in the fact that tardiness (or excess lateness by a student) is added into the attendance rate and one doesn’t get the full sense of a truancy problem. After all, one reacts differently to a 93 percent attendance rate (which makes it seem as if most kids are attending school) than a rate that shows that 16 percent of students are truant (which is more-accurate and distressing).

What principals, teachers, district officials and parents need is the percentage of students reaching the state definition of truancy (in many states, 10 or more days of unexcused absences) — in order to identify clusters of truancy — and the chronic truants themselves (so they can be targeted for additional help). A group of teachers at New York City’s High School for Telecommunications – frustrated with the district’s poor attendance tracking — are among those developing technologies to improve how attendance is calculated. The technological solutions, however, are meaningless without developing actual calculations that plainly break down what is happening and making the data public for all to see.

California is one of two states (out of 10) surveyed by Dropout Nation that have gone this far in providing truancy data.  (Indiana, the epicenter for a 2007 editorial series Dropout Nation’s editor wrote on truancy for The Indianapolis Star, is the other). Unlike other states, the state Department of Education publishes something called an actual Truancy rate, which shows the percentage of students missing three or more days of school unexcused. Even better, its data system actually shows the number of truant students in any given county, district or school. For a researcher or truancy prevention advocate, this is a much-better first step in determining the extent of truancy than the traditional attendance rates reported by other states.

What one learns, particularly about truancy in districts in Los Angeles County, is distressing. Fifty-seven of L.A. County’s 88 school districts (including the county department of education) had truancy rates of greater than 10 percent. Within the county’s largest district, Los Angeles Unified, 77 of its 658 schools were plagued with truancy rates greater than 10 percent. While high schools were plagued with double-digit truancy rates, so were middle schools such as Charles Drew in the city’s Florence-Graham neighborhood; there, 54 percent of the student population were chronically truant. The truancy rate for L.A. Unified overall was 5.4 percent; but the number leaves out truancy levels at the elementary school level (where as many as one in ten kindergarten and first grade students miss a month of school). (A a full list is on L.A. County is available here.)

A PORTRAIT OF TRUANCY: SAN GABRIEL UNIFIED

School Enrollment* Number of Students with UnexcusedAbsence or Tardy on 3 or More Days (truants) Truancy Rate
Coolidge Elementary 385 197 51.17%
Del Mar High 69 102 147.83%
Gabrielino High 1,794 1,535 85.56%
Jefferson Middle 1,239 691 55.77%
Mckinley Elementary 712 210 29.49%
Roosevelt Elementary 415 203 48.92%
Washington Elementary 458 241 52.62%
Wilson Elementary 367 161 43.87%
San Gabriel Unified District 5,439 3,340 61.41%

For all of its dysfunction, L.A. Unified doesn’t have the highest truancy rate in the county. That distinction belongs to the nearby San Gabriel Unified School District, where 61 percent of students were chronically truant. The level of unexplained absences starts early; 51 percent of students at Coolidge Elementary School were truant, while at Gabriellino High, the truancy rate was 86 percent. Another high-truancy district is Lynwood Unified, whose truancy rate of 56 percent was just below that of San Gabriel. Almost every one of the 3,152 students at Lynwood High School had missed three or more days of school without any explanation, while 81 percent of students at Cesar Chavez Middle School were truant.

A PROFILE OF TRUANCY: LYNWOOD UNIFIED
School Enrollment* Number of Students with Unexcused Absence or Tardy on 3 or More Days (truants) Truancy Rate
Cesar Chavez Middle 976 791 81.05%
Helen Keller Elementary 621 249 40.1%
Hosler Middle 1,159 1,011 87.23%
Janie P. Abbott Elementary 676 247 36.54%
Lincoln Elementary 644 176 27.33%
Lindbergh Elementary 784 179 22.83%
Lugo Elementary 492 218 44.31%
Lynwood High 3,152 3,137 99.52%
Lynwood Middle 1,648 1,450 87.99%
Marco Antonio Firebaugh High 1,875 863 46.03%
Mark Twain Elementary 616 197 31.98%
Pathway Independent Study 84 10 11.9%
Roosevelt Elementary 540 196 36.3%
Rosa Parks Elementary 626 99 15.81%
Thurgood Marshall Elementary 673 260 38.63%
Vista High (Continuation) 314 101 32.17%
Washington Elementary 786 198 25.19%
Will Rogers Elementary 769 190 24.71%
Wilson Elementary 586 102 17.41%
Lynwood Unified District 17,021 9,674 56.84%

The data  isn’t perfect. Tardiness is incorporated into the numbers, which could skew the number of actual absentees. One could also argue that three days of unexcused absence may be strict. But at least California has made a first step towards  reporting realistic attendance data — and school districts have information they can use to address the underlying causes of truancy.

This isn’t happening in a successful way. School districts in Los Angeles County haven’t exactly done a great job addressing truancy. Despite high-profile sweeps, anti-truancy ordinances and other efforts by districts in the county, the truancy rate countywide has barely budged between 2004-2005 and 2008-2009. L.A. Unified, even took the media-grabbing step of having its outgoing superintendent, Ramon Cortines and school board members go door to door to grab truants, is the only one that can report a decline, with a 34 percent decrease in truancy in that time. But even those efforts are only band-aids; more importantly, since the sweeps tend to happen during periods when districts must count up students in order to gain funding, the moves can viewed cynically  as just ways to keep the money flowing without actually doing anything to address the underlying causes of truancy. School district officials and charter school operators in L.A. County must do a better job of addressing the underlying issues — as must their counterparts throughout the nation.

But at least California (along with Indiana) has taken a step that most other states — especially Virginia and Tennessee, two of the other states surveyed by  Dropout Nation — refuse to do.  Accurate, honest, publicly-reported data is the critical first step to making the technological and academic changes needed to stop truancy in its tracks — and keep every kid on the path to economic, social and personal success.

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Dropout Nation on Twitter

Dropout Nation on Twitter for 2010-09-16

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Paladino's win over Rick Lazio isn't, as the NYT says, all that stunning. Anyone who knows NY's political culture knows this was bound to # happen. New York's GOP is…

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School Leadership Three Thoughts

Two Thoughts on Education This Week: Elections Department

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What this week’s primary elections actually tell us about the battle over reforming American public education: Voters Are Concerned About More Than Education: The problem for single-issue activists, no matter…

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

What this week’s primary elections actually tell us about the battle over reforming American public education:

Voters Are Concerned About More Than Education: The problem for single-issue activists, no matter who they are, is tunnel vision. They are so focused on one particular issue that they think it should be the paramount factor in supporting or opposing a candidate. What is forgotten is that for the average voter — neither monomaniacal nor able to spend one’s time focusing on a particular issue (or on any issue, given the scarcity of time and the needs to keep kids clothed and roofs over heads) — no one particular issue alone, no matter how important it may be, is the one on which they will make decisions.

More often than not, they are judging candidates based on several factors largely based on their personal experiences: Is the candidate likable; can he get the job done; is he connected to the community in which the voters live; and is he part of the networks (from churches to bars) with which they spend time. Essentially, the voter may agree with a candidate on several issues, but find that person generally distasteful. Or, if they are in middle age or senior citizens, take the view that a younger candidate doesn’t have enough gray hairs on the head and needs to wait his turn (a particular problem in the black community). Or they may know the incumbent or challenger is corrupt and a machine politician, but remember what that person did for them on a personal level. Or they are more concerned about the economic problems of the present and see no connections between those matters and the future that they think only their grandchildren will see. Or they just don’t agree that education is all that important an issue, period. The candidate’s position on one issue alone ultimately matters little.

This is something school reformers must keep in mind as they moan over Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s loss in yesterday’s primaries and the victories of school reform opponents such as New York State Senator Bill Perkins (whose senseless opposition to charter schools should be an outrage to Harlem residents and Black America in general). In the case of Fenty, it is clear that his reform of D.C. Public Schools wasn’t the only factor in his defeat; if anything, Michelle Rhee was the single-biggest reason why most Fenty voters sided with him (and why even some Fenty foes are having second thoughts about supporting the winner, Vincent Gray, who will oust Rhee in  order to keep peace with the city’s Ancien Regime). Once you take school reform out of the equation, Fenty’s other problems — a demeanor at which even Churchill would look askance, mediocre management of city government, and the inability to manage the particularly virulent race issues that color D.C. politics — almost guaranteed him defeat. He was a one-term mayor before he even ran for re-election.

As for Perkins? He is a longstanding incumbent with deep roots in Harlem. He is also an old-school black politician — and there are plenty of voters his age who will have to be forced to the sidelines before the New Jacks take charge. His opponent, Basil Smikle, doesn’t have that deep network, lacks such privileges and didn’t have enough young voters he could on for victory. Another reformer, Michael Castle (who lost Delaware’s Republican senatorial primary) didn’t mention those credentials very much — and given the recriminations among conservative activists over the excesses of the George W. Bush era (including the No Child Left Behind Act), couldn’t use that background for any positive or negative effect.

Meanwhile the school reform politicians who won — including Perkins’ fellow state legislator, Sam Hoyt — have also connected to their voters on other important issues; in the case of Hoyt, the very privileges of incumbency that favored Perkins also favored him. School reform may have been the high-profile talking point, but for the voters, not the only one. Neither school reformers nor defenders of the status quo in public education may have captured anyone’s imagination.

Certainly, school reformers are right in arguing that overhauling American public education is critical. But they must remember that school reform isn’t the only issue on the minds of voters. If reformers are to win over the rest of the electorate, they must present clear connections between the need to improve education and the concerns voters find to be more-pressing.

The Importance of Building Community Ties: Green Dot Public Schools founder Steve Barr notes that he always spent time in a community — from churches to social groups — listening, talking and reaching out, before starting a new school there. Why? Because black and Latino communities — like all minority communities — are suspicious of outsiders bearing promises (and have the memories of past promises unkept deeply ingrained in their thoughts). Essentially, you can’t convince people to ally with you until you build connections with them.

This week’s primaries are stark reminders of this reality. In Harlem, Basil Smikle offered compelling reasons for voters to oust Bill Perkins from his New York State Senate seat — and he had backing from school reform activists, both in Harlem and outside of it. But the reformers only had connections to new Harlem residents, who don’t have deep community ties. The reformers also didn’t have enough strong ties to longtime residents, who think that their supposed  Chocolate City is getting a tad too pale and middle class (despite the fact that Harlem has always been a diverse community with strong middle class base —  and given the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the presence of such institutions as the Schonburg Center, upscale even). And while some charter school operators have made strong ties to their communities, others still have a superficial relationship with community players that won’t help in beating back someone as influential as Perkins.

The lack of strong ties communities shouldn’t surprise school reformers, especially among the Beltway crowd. The lack of strong support in communities has been the single-biggest obstacle to sustaining reform. And if school reformers don’t start getting into the game by building ties with churches and grassroots activists — and rallying the millions of single parents, grandparents and immigrant families ready to play their part in reforming public education — they will not be able to keep their hard-won gains.

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