Dropouts: a video podcast

[Sherman Dorn <sdorn@tempest.coedu.usf.edu>]

Peter Campbell writes:

> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec04/dropouts_11-30.html
> This report makes the phenomenon of high-school "push-outs" crystal 
clear.

Sometimes I wish that journalists' reports made the scope of problems 
clear, but they don't. They do more to call attention to a phenomenon 
(which has been written about since at least a 1973 report "The Student 
Push-out" - get my 1996 book Creating the Dropout if you want all the 
gory details of the history of concerns over dropping out) than to 
really quantify or analyze it. Florida is a good case in point. We know 
from Merrow's podcast that the number of W26s moved in one year from 
about 11,000 to 17,000. That's alarming, but it doesn't tell us how much 
the Florida formula hides. Florida has over 2 million K-12 students 
every year, and while 6,000 would be a huge number in many states, it 
may not significantly affect the official graduation rate in Florida.  
For that, we need to dig into the numbers behind the calculation. Yes, I 
intend to ask, since it's in my research area, but we just don't know. 
Principals can be and sometimes are wrong about how to game the system. 
(Note: That doesn't mean that some don't try to game the system even if 
they're wrong about how to do it. Of course you find plenty of gaming.)

And even so, there's a difference between documenting the effect of the 
W26 exclusion on graduation rates -- I'd certainly want W26s counted as 
attrition -- and the claim that a specific policy caused any change in 
graduation. In part because graduation rates are highly sensitive to 
inaccurate estimates of migration/transferring, I have to be skeptical 
of claims just from statistical evidence. It'd be necessary to confirm 
that with evidence from school counselors that they are pressured to 
shift students into GED classes.

Sherman Dorn
University of South Florida
http://www.coedu.usf.edu/~dorn
http://www.shermandorn.com