High school dropout rate rises to 50 percent in new report
State dropout rates for public school students has risen to 50 percent. That’s the take on a new state report requested by two lawmakers who are sponsoring bills which would offer alternative curricula and career diplomas to the state’s 180,000 public school students. The high school drop out rate for Louisiana has been consistently reported in the past at 33 percent.
State Sen. Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe, and Rep. Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, wanted to measure the dropout rate of students grades seven through 12, a different standard than the previous state report which examined only high school students in grades nine through 12. They say the overall outlook, which includes students who fail the grade eight LEAP test and subsequently dropout, shows a glaring need to reform graduation standards for students who are leaving the school system before the ninth grade.
According to The Advocate, State Superintendent Paul Pastorek takes issue with the new report. Pastorek adheres to the national standard of measuring graduation rates by looking at the 9-12 picture of graduation trends. “At the end of the day, they decided this was the best way to look at it and the most effective way to look at it,” Pastorek told The Advocate.
... written by rbell2lsu , June 09, 2009 - 06:03 pm
Holy Crap everyone leave the state of Louisiana before it is overrun by morons. It's bad enough that LA's leaders are greedy idiots. Must of been the stupid ideas coming from them to affect so many young minds. Ideas like "changing the standard", how about changing the leadership.
... written by Amused , June 09, 2009 - 06:06 pm
If you read the Advocate article a bit more carefully, you'll see that the old study and probably the new one as well count students as dropouts if they repeat a grade:
"Roughly one in three ninth-graders fails to graduate ON TIME FOUR YEARS LATER, according to figures developed by the state Department of Education.
But Fannin said that, when students are studied from grades seven through 12, the dropout figures are even bleaker." (emphasis mine)
One-third, one-half . . . both are bleak numbers. But it seems to me that these politicians and bureaucrats have used a counting method that exaggerates the dropout rate rather than giving us an accurate picture. Why? To what end?
... written by Education wonk , June 10, 2009 - 07:41 am
I love the closing line of the Advocate's article ââ?¬Å?If we are going to move this state toward the future, industry has to have a work force,ââ?¬Â Fannin said. That attitude alone is part of our problem. A consistent over reliance on the salvation of large polluting and extraction based industries, that fail to add to the commercial culture of our state, and which ultimately offer no long term investment in a sustainable state is the problem! When our people simply work for others at the expenses of their environment, their health, one's political integrity, and our historic cultural zeal for self reliance and original thinking, then they act to their own detriment. This thinking fosters an attitude of complacency that is pervasive here. Anything goes, especially if it can be poured down the kitchen sink, or dumped along a roadside or into a bayou. Hey I just got paid to help exploit the natural resources of my home, so why should I care what they do with the place? Louisiana sucks, it has no opportunity, so I'm moving, is the oft heard refrain. Well no wonder, when Senator Hick, and Representative Billy Bob see fit to distort statistics as the previous poster mentions. Are they just trying to justify their reason for being in office? Are they that self-important, thinking that some kind of bogus appearing study, decrying the miserable suffering nature of our state is going to help them win brownie points and votes for next time? This state is full of a bunch of negative defeatists who do more harm than good.
I was under the impression, perhaps an ill-informed one, that a student could not Legally drop out until age 15 or 16, and that at some point in the previous 10 years the standard had been made more rigorous.
Seriously, how possibly can 50% of the younger population be grade school dropouts, I can't possibly believe that to be true. The Advocate was very clear in the repeated use of the term "not graduating on time." That in no way implies that they have entirely quit on their education, nor does it indicate that they are failing to acquire a G.E.D. How many of them repeat so many times that they are automatically failed, or are forced out by age 20 or 22? The only reason anyone would "dropout" before 9th grade, is for repeating so often and consecutively that the child/student is 4-5 years behind schedule with no hope of catching up, an altogether rare event. Something in these numbers does not make sense, is it a fish or a rat?
Having said this, I would like to see a breakdown of all this data on a parish by parish data, as trends would likely reveal themselves more fully when the demographic data is related to the raw totals. Whatever "solution" is going to be concocted this time will have to consider local conditions and small scale responses, as any systemic course correction is likely to cause more damage statewide than the perceived improvements to be made in individual locations. Let's not forget group, individual, and family psychology here. Outlook has a tremendous impact on expectations and perseverance. When opportunity is not congruous with effort, at least within one child's grasp, his view of the world he knows around him, then why expect more from him?
Finally just to close here with an opinion, our schools have historically done a terrible job, on being overly regimented, and stiflers of true creative thinking. I saw some of the brightest people I knew to have dropped out of advanced placement/GT courses, school entirely for that matter, with no suffering to their current lives. More broadly, schools historically did not tend to empower the average student with any self confidence. Mostly, school was a miserable exercise in the formulaic. Our schools consistently force feed conformity on our population, and at the same time fail to foster any sense of shared common cause and purpose as a society, as Louisianians. I'm not with the religious education crowd on these points, but I do think education needs to be diversified in this state, and taken more so out of the hands of being government form operated, and simply to be overseen by government review for accountability purposes.
... written by Zip Your Pants , June 10, 2009 - 02:30 pm
written by rbell2lsu , June 09, 2009 Holy Crap everyone leave the state of Louisiana before it is overrun by morons
Yes, many of the morons will be at the WWE event in the Cajundome.
... written by Zip Your Pants , June 10, 2009 - 02:36 pm
written by Education wonk , June 10, 2009 "our schools have historically done a terrible job"
Parents (or lack of parents) is the first cause. If the example at home is not right, then the schools will always be terrible.
... written by callmeal , June 10, 2009 - 06:32 pm
Here's an idea. Let's have the house and senate take the LEAP tests, too. If they are in the top 5%, they can keep their seats.
... written by Bill Betzen , June 11, 2009 - 03:12 am
As to how to measure the dropout rate the best way it for every school and school district to have available to the public, hopefully online, a simple spreadsheet with enrollment by grade information going back for a decade or longer and updated annually with new enrollment and gradution numbers for each year. Such a spreadsheet quickly allows the public to calculate the dropout measurement they find most valuable. The three most common measurements (9th grade cohort gradution rate, Cumulative Promotion Index and 9th to 12th grade promotion rate) could all be automatically be included in separate rows in the spreadsheet. That would allow those most common dropout rate indicators to be available to the public as they look at the spreadsheet and the numbers used to calculate those rates.
That level of transparency is long overdue in our nations school systems. You can see an example of what such spreadsheet can look like at www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd.htm . That is one example of a possible spreadsheet for Dallas ISD here in Texas. Dropout rates need to be publically known.
Once they are extablished we must work to lower them. The way to do that is to focus our students onto their own futures. We do that at our middle school with a 350-pound vault bolted to the floor in the lobby that functions as a 10-year time capsule, also establishing a 10-year 8th grade class reunion that helps make the future real for our students. They are staying in school and dropout indicators are down over 26% with this small project only costing less than $2 per 8th grade student. See www.studentmotivation.org for details.
... written by Zip Your Pants , June 11, 2009 - 03:17 am
written by callmeal , June 10, 2009 "Here's an idea. Let's have the house and senate take the LEAP tests, too. If they are in the top 5%, they can keep their seats."
Nah, to much trouble, don't want my TV full of ads. But if we can send them to Gitmo I'd be for it.
... written by Myrick6 , June 11, 2009 - 01:40 pm
I never knew the drop out rates didnt include students who might be in 7th or 8th grade when they drop out. I expect these numbers, 48'%, is closer to the truth than not. Well, in that case, I'm even more inclined to close some of the smaller universities and pare down the larger ones! Not even half are going to university, so the system has been bloated for years. Cut, cut, cut - cut legislators salaries if you have to, just don't cut my taxes any more. I'll support restoring the budget to universities when they support recinding their tuition hikes. The doom and gloom about Lafayette's economy, it may well happen, but it was going to happen anyway. As far as Acadian Ambulance lay offs, that's another fungus on the health care system. They might lie and say its necessary, but if they don't want to lay off, truth be told, they could keep those 23 positions. So, its time to do something about the education system here and I think the first thing to do is clean house, top to bottom.
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