Duval County Educational Challenges 2008

EDUCATION BRIEFING #1 JANUARY 2008

TALKING POINTS THE STUDY An analysis of student enrollment and dis-engagement between 2003-2006 at three Duval County high schools: Englewood High School, Forrest High School and Terry Parker High School.

FINDINGS Class sizes shrink dramatically between 9th and 12th grade, with the greatest loss of students occurring between 9th and 10th grade.

• At

Forrest High, the Class of 2007 started out in 9th grade with 680 members. In 10th grade there were 409 members. By the start of the senior year, there were 285 members.

UNDERSTANDING THE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT CRISIS IN DUVAL COUNTY SCHOOLS Duval County loses far too many of its public high school students before they ever graduate. Hundreds of students who enter the 9th grade are not in school a year later; hundreds more leave school in succeeding years.

Some transfer to the Adult High School at Florida Community College at Jacksonville. But most just stop attending school, leaving themselves unprepared for the future and unlikely to participate in a growing economy.

Keeping students in high school is critical: Students cannot achieve academically unless they are in school. Students cannot graduate unless they are in school. Students cannot prepare for the future unless they are in school.

INTRODUCTION Male students tend to drop out more frequently than female students, and male students drop out in lower grades than do female students.

• At

Terry Parker High, 65% of 9th grade dropouts were male, and 82% of 11th grade dropouts were female.

African American students do not drop out at a higher rate than white or Hispanic students.

• At

Forrest High, 33% of the student body is white, but 39% of the dropouts are white; 8% of the students are Hispanic, but 13% of the dropouts are Hispanic; 51% of the students are African American, but 43% of the dropouts are African American.

In Duval County, only 64.3% of public high school students graduate on time.1 What happens to the others? How many withdraw or drop out? Why do they leave and how do they leave?

For The Community Foundation in Jacksonville, these are important questions. Its 10-year initiative, Quality Education for All, supports work that will improve the graduation and dropout rates for Duval County public schools.

Understanding the complexities of these issues is the first step toward changing the trends.

Most dropouts actually “slip away” from school rather than making a conscious decision to terminate enrollment. Most frequently, the students have chronic absenteeism and, once they turn 16, schools simply drop them from the rolls.

• At

Englewood High, 82% of the dropouts in 2006-2007 were dropped from rolls due to excessive absences.

Number of students

To begin, the Foundation, with the help of Duval County Public Schools, identified three high schools for in-depth assessment: Englewood High School, Forrest High School and Terry Parker High School. The schools are racially mixed, in middle- or workingclass neighborhoods and have troubling dropout trends.

Through data analysis, focus groups and interviews with teachers, administrators and community partners, researchers developed a clearer picture of what happens to students after they enter high school.

That picture contradicts some myths about dropouts and reveals patterns of when and how students are leaving high school.

STUCK IN 9TH GRADE The greatest loss of students occurs between the 9th and 10th grade. Ninth grade classes of 600 and 700 students shrink to 10th grade classes of 400-500 students. While student population declines continue through high school, the drop between 9th and 10th grade is most pronounced.

In part this is due to student retention – failing 9th graders who are told to repeat the 9th grade. But national research suggests only 10-15% of repeaters actually go on to graduate2.

Of those who dropped out in 20062007, about one-fourth simply didn’t show up for school in the fall. They attended the prior year and were expected to enroll in fall 2006 but did not. This was most pronounced at Forrest High, where more than one third – 38% – of students expected to enroll in the fall did not return to school.

Another one-fourth of the dropouts proactively left school. They filed an “Intent to Terminate Enrollment” form with Duval County Public Schools, suggesting that they planned to enroll in the Adult High School at Florida Community College in Jacksonville.

The largest group of dropouts overall, however, were students who were 16 years old or older, had chronic and excessive absences and were dropped from the rolls. At Englewood, 83% of dropouts were in this category; at Forrest, 42%, and at Terry Parker, 35%.

1

Duval County’s 2006-2007 graduation rate was 64.3%, an increase over the 2005-2006 rate of 60.5%, but still lower than the statewide rate of 72.4%

2

Robert Balfanz, Johns Hopkins University

W H Y S T U D E N T S L E AV E “Dropping out” appears to be less of an “event” and more the end result of an extended process. In fact, national studies show that students begin to “disengage” with schools long before high school and that there are some clear indicators of student disengagement.

Chronic absenteeism along with student retention (students not promoted to the next grade) are two of the major indicators of student disengagement.

Observers theorize that chronic absenteeism does not begin in 9th grade; it likely is a habit that is formed in middle school. A middle school student with excessive absences may be held back a year or two. By the time the student reaches the 9th grade, she or he may be 16, or will turn 16 during the 9th grade year.

The patterns of chronic absenteeism are set, the student reaches 16 years of age and no longer is a truant and is simply dropped from the school roll.

In Duval County, 15.5% of all middle school students missed more than 21 days of school in 2005-2006.

But at five of the six main middle schools that feed into Englewood, Forrest and Terry Parker, middle school absenteeism is much higher, ranging from 19% at Landon Middle School (Englewood) to 27% at J.E.B. Stuart and Jeff Davis middle schools (Forrest).

Out-of-school suspensions are considered the third major indicator of student disengagement. Englewood, Forrest and Terry Parker had more than 550 out-of-school suspensions each during 2005-2006, and 9th grade students received the largest number.

WHO DROPS OUT? The public often perceives dropouts to be overwhelmingly minority and male. But, in fact, at the three study high schools, dropouts were male and female, minority and non-minority, in somewhat equal portions.

Looking at 2006-2007 data: » Slightly more males than females dropped out, but at each of the three schools, females comprised more than

40% of the dropouts. At Terry Parker, girls comprised 46% of all dropouts.

At each school, girls tended to comprise a larger portion of the dropout pool in upper grades – 11th or 12th grade. At Terry Parker, for instance, 82% of 11th grade dropouts were girls, while at Englewood and Forrest, 50% or more of the 12th grade dropouts were female.

» In each of the three schools, the percentage of dropouts who were African American was equal to or less than the percentage of students who were African American. In other words, African American students did not drop out in numbers disproportionate to their presence in the overall school population.

In fact, at Forrest, whites dropped out at disproportionately high rates and African Americans dropped out at disproportionately low rates.

Obviously, the racial and ethnic makeup of the dropout population will vary from school to school. But the findings at the three study schools, with their highly diverse populations, suggest that students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds are equally vulnerable to dropping out.

A LARGER CONTEXT The situation at these three Duval County high schools mirrors trends that researchers have found in other communities across the country. “…graduation rates in the 50-60% range typical in many cities are driven by students who enter high school poorly prepared for success and rarely or barely make it out of the ninth

grade,” writes Robert Balfanz, a researcher with Johns Hopkins University who specializes in high school education challenges. “They disengage from school, attend infrequently, fail too many courses to be promoted to the 10th grade, try again with no better results, and ultimately drop out of school.”

The Youth Transition Funders Group (www.ytfg.org) has helped many communities explore and address the dropout crisis. Through their efforts they have identified key lessons that have relevance for Duval County: PREVENTION: School-related indicators – not socio-economic characteristics – are the most useful predictors of who will drop out.

EXPLAINING GRADUATION RATES & DROPOUT RATES It seems logical to assume that all high school students who don’t graduate must drop out, and, therefore, a school’s graduation rate and dropout rate should complement one another. But, in fact, public education statistics are not so logical.

Consider the fictitious Washington High School, which had enrollments in 2004, 2006 and 2007 as shown in the table.

(For the purposes of this illustration, we will assume that no students moved away, enrolled in private schools or died.)

In Florida, the graduation rate represents the number of 9th grade students who graduate four years later. At Washington High, there were 400 9th graders in the fall of 2003 and in the spring of 2007 there were 300 12th graders, all of whom graduated, leaving Washington High with a graduation rate of 75%.

(It is important to know that not all states calculate the graduation rate the same way, so state-to-state comparisons can be misleading.)

The dropout rate represents the number of students who stopped attending school during a single year. At Washington High, the 2006-2007 school year started with 1,545 students and ended with 1,500 – a loss of 45 students on a total enrollment of 1,545, for a dropout rate of 2.9%

School districts cannot alter socio-economics; schools cannot “fix” poverty or single-parent households. Identifying in-school indicators, such as course failure, absenteeism, student retention and others, positions schools, parents and community partners to intervene early if students begin to slip off the path.

ONGOING SUPPORT: Many high school students require more than four years to graduate. Some students enter high school with low literacy levels and need time to build skills; others must proceed at a slower pace because of demands of work or family.

AFTERCARE: Most dropouts persist in efforts to complete their secondary education. Studies show that nearly 60% of youth who drop out eventually earn a high school credential, generally a GED certificate.

These findings raise questions for Duval County:

» What are the in-school indicators for dropping out and how can Duval County schools work to monitor these indicators and reach out to students before they drop out?

» What roles do teachers, parents and the school climate play and how can they be influenced to be more supportive?

» Are there adequate opportunities for students who have dropped out to return to school in Duval County?

» Finally, are we satisfied with the quality and accuracy of Duval County’s dropout data?

NEXT STEPS

VOICES

This research was conducted under the Learning to Finish component of The Community Foundation’s Quality Education for All initiative. Learning to Finish focuses on assessing and improving conditions for struggling students, lowering the dropout rate and increasing the graduation rate.

The Learning to Finish Leadership Council has connected with a national network of cities studying these issues and will continue its research and study throughout 2008 with the goal of having actionable recommendations by early 2009.

In support of this work, The Community Foundation has engaged researchers from Johns Hopkins University to review Duval County data and identify the early in-school indicators of student disengagement.

This research, to be conducted in 2008, should provide school officials, parents and others information about likely points of early intervention to prevent students from dropping out.

Additionally, the Foundation hopes to develop information on the economic impact of student dropouts on Duval County. This research will help the community assess the relative value of financial investments in intervention and prevention efforts.

Subsequent Education Briefings will address the findings of these research efforts.

Teachers and guidance counselors from Englewood, Forrest and Terry Parker high schools were asked their thoughts on high school students and dropouts.

“I think it [the dropout crisis] is deeper than the data shows. It’s huge and getting worse.”

“Duval County parents and the kids have figured out that they’re not dropping out, they’re just dropping in.

They’re going to Terry Parker for a couple of weeks and then when that doesn’t work out, they’re going to drop [out] and drop into Englewood for a few weeks and see if their grades improve…

In between … they actually miss a month of school.”

“I think the kid comes to school, they begin to be absent and then they come back and, you can call it what you like but, they feel harassed. They hear, ‘Well, you were out last week and the week before and here’s all the work you missed and you have to get this all done,’…. And then they go home and get harassed, so they’re stressed.

Finally the parents are so stressed, they tell the kid, ‘You’re 17 now, you want to drop out, that’s fine with me.’” “[There are] less options…Our students go from an English class to a Reading class to a Math class and then to Remedial Reading class, that’s their day. Would you want to come?”

“As a guidance counselor, it makes me sick that I have to do all this FCAT testing or ESE work knowing there are kids who had a murder or death in the family and they have to sit in the classrooms with nobody to talk with.”

“I think the kids view school as something to get through rather than to help them learn and grow to become a better person.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about tomorrow. I think they need to be concerned about today and that’s how I teach. I try to keep them focused on today. If I can get them through today, the tomorrows will take care of themselves. When we were coming along, it was tomorrow, but because students have so much on their plates, I think if we change the philosophy on tomorrow and keep them focused on today, it would be better for them.”

This report was prepared as part of The Community Foundation in Jacksonville’s Quality Education for All initiative, of which Learning to Finish is a part. It was made possible through the generous support of The Community Foundation and United Way of Northeast Florida. It may be found at www.jaxcf.org.

Research: Laura Lane, JCCI/United Way of Northeast Florida Focus Groups: Jana Ertrachter, The Ertrachter Group, Jacksonville, Florida Editing: Mary Kress Littlepage, KBT & Associates, Jacksonville, Florida Published by The Community Foundation in Jacksonville