Schools told work must start earlier to reduce South’s dropouts

ATLANTA (AP) — Educators must focus on warning signs as early as elementary school if they hope to reduce glaring high school dropout rates throughout the South, researchers said Thursday at a conference tackling the issue.

The behavior, attendance and grades of students in fourth grade, or even younger, often are strong indicators of whether those students will eventually earn a diploma, said University of California-Santa Barbara researcher Russell Rumberger.

“In a way, we can think of dropping out as a symptom of a problem that may have occurred much earlier in life,” he said. “If we want to do something, we have to have a long-term strategy.”

The conference sponsored by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University came a day after it released a study calling the South’s dropout rates, particularly among black and Hispanic students, an “educational and civil rights crisis.”

The study found that only 64.5 percent of Southern high school students graduate in four years, nearly 5 percentage points below the national figure. That number dips to 56.3 percent for Hispanics and 55.3 percent for black students.

The one-day conference, held at the historically black Spelman College, brought together educators, researchers, activists and politicians with the goal of attracting the attention of policy-makers.

“It’s our intent to just keep the pressure on,” said Daniel Losen, one of the study’s authors, who said many educators and politicians focus more on test scores, such as those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law, than graduation rates. “We hope that people will not be able to sweep this under the carpet.”

Panelists said focusing dropout-reduction efforts only on high school students have limited success. Largely, they said, those efforts come too late.

“We expect students to learn in lockstep,” said NAACP attorney Damon Hewitt, “but they’re not coming (to high school) with the same inputs.”

Rumberger said research shows that failing a class in middle school is a “very strong indicator” a student will drop out in high school.

Minimal parental involvement, attending large schools and going to school with lots of other students who drop out also lead to lower graduation rates, he said.

Several panelists cited the federally funded First Things First program as an example of reform that could help reduce dropouts. The program divides schools into smaller, themed “academies” and encourages stronger student-teacher and teacher-parent ties.

The program is being tested in a handful of school systems including Kansas City, Kan., which has reported promising improvements since it was implemented in 1997.

Keynote speaker Vincent Fort, a state senator from Atlanta, said that, regardless of the method, policy-makers should feel morally compelled to work aggressively at reducing dropout rates.

“These rates are not only a scandal, they’re a crime,” Fort said. “It’s a crime against these children and it’s a crime against this state.”

Georgia has one of the South’s lowest minority graduation rates, according to the Harvard study, with 47.4 percent of blacks and 42.4 percent of Hispanics graduating on time. In Florida, the graduation rate for black males was just 38.3 percent.

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On the Net:

Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project, http:www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu