Efforts to Stem Dropouts Fail, Educators Say

Despite the education innovations of the last three decades, a growing percentage of high school dropouts are coming from the more highly gifted and younger segments of the school population, education experts said here Saturday.

Nearly 40% of all students who enter elementary school in the nation’s large cities will fail to complete 12 years of study, and nationwide about 25% will drop out, the experts told a meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science. This rate, which has remained relatively stable in recent years, has not been affected by programs aimed at luring dropouts back into high school, they said.

Recent studies in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest school system, show that one-sixth of the students who dropped out of school did so in grades six through eight, and some did it even earlier, reported educational anthropologist Margaret D. LeCompte, a consultant to the Houston Public School System.

At least 25% of all students who dropped out, she added, scored above the 75th percentile on standardized tests of reading and math abilities. Several of the students were in the 95th percentile.

There is also, she said, a growing “culture of cutting,” in which students may be in the school building or on school grounds but are not present in class. These are primarily “students from the middle class who are bored with the conditions of schooling but afraid to violate the cultural taboos against dropping out.”

Besides boredom, the growing rate of teen-age pregnancy contributes to the changes in the dropout population, researchers reported.

Programs Not Working

The experts stressed that educational programs designed to break the dropout cycle are not working but said new efforts to employ financial incentives have shown signs of success. “Traditional dropout programs fail completely at reaching these students,” LeCompte said.

Surprisingly, she added, efforts to improve education by establishing minimum competency tests appear to be increasing the dropout rate. “When it becomes clear that staying in school will not result in the (automatic) granting of a diploma, students whose skills are marginal will drop out.”

The effects of dropping out are disastrous, said Jeannette Hargroves, a research associate for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Less than half of the dropouts will have a job a year after their high school class has graduated, she said. For black dropouts, only one in four will have a job.

Most dropout programs share four characteristics, LeCompte said. They segregate potential dropouts from other students; they have strong vocational components; they utilize out-of-classroom learning and they are often characterized by individualized instruction.

Approaches Ineffective

These approaches are ineffective, she said, because “they don’t solve the economic and social problems that cause kids to drop out in the first place, and they don’t solve school problems.” The same problems that cause youngsters to drop out of school also make it difficult for them to retain jobs.

Such problems include difficulty in getting along with other people, difficulties in providing child care for the children of teens, or levels of thinking skills that are too low for employers to find the youth desirable.

LeCompte argued that programs should be restructured to place potential dropouts back into the educational mainstream with other students. Day care programs should be provided when needed.

The emphasis on vocational and remedial education should be dropped in favor of a liberal education with emphasis on thinking skills, she added. “This, not a dead-end and deadly boring repetition of elementary school, is the best deterrent to dropping out, unemployment, and hopelessness.”

Financial Incentives

The dropout rate can also be reduced by providing economic and financial incentives to stay in school, Hargroves said. One model for this is the Boston Compact, begun in 1982. In that year, 350 Boston businesses pledged to provide more jobs to high school students and graduates.

In 1983, Boston’s 23 colleges and universities agreed to a goal of increasing the proportion of ninth-graders who eventually entered college by 25% by 1989. And in 1985, Boston trade unions agreed to increase the number of apprenticeships for high school graduates.

While these efforts have not yet reduced the number of dropouts, she said, they have had positive benefits. College enrollment of Boston graduates, for example, has increased by 15% since 1983. And, compared to other large U.S. cities, she said, twice as many Boston youths are working in the labor force.

In the same symposium, urban anthropologist R. Timothy Seiber of the University of Massachusetts at Boston reported that “yuppification” of inner cities--the return of educated, relatively wealthy young professionals--did not necessarily improve the quality of education.

Enrolled in Private Schools

In a study of urban renewal areas in New York City, Seiber found that more than 80% of the returning whites enrolled their children in private schools.

Parents with children in public schools did become actively engaged with those schools, but their efforts frequently led to so-called “tracking” curricula, in which the white youths were placed in advanced classes segregated from the rest of the students.

These efforts created “considerable tension” between the white parents and the teachers, who resented the parents’ pushiness and condescension, and between the white parents and minorities who had previously dominated the school and who felt excluded.