Orlando Sentinel: Dropout Factory? Florida among 17 states where dropout rate is critical, report says
Leslie Postal
Orlando Sentinel
Jul 27, 2009
Florida is one of 17 states that account for 70 percent of the nation's dropouts, and one of just five where the dropout "crisis" is pervasive and statewide, according to a report released Wednesday.
The report recommends the federal government, already spending billions on education as part of the massive economic recovery package, target some of that spending to improve failing high schools in these 17 states. It says the federal government can help develop, and then replicate, effective models for high school reform.
The country needs to care about low high-school graduation rates in states like Florida because they are "too big too fail," the report states. In short, "the whole nation suffers" when teen-agers drop out of Florida's high schools.
The report was done by Jobs for the Future and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. The other states cited are Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Tom Butler, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Education, said staff has not had a chance to fully review the report. But he said Florida already has implemented some of the recommended reforms, including adopting a new accountability system that aims to "target services and increase state support" for struggling schools.
And he noted that Florida's education data system is considered a national model and is already used to figure out which schools need help.
"I think Florida is kind of ahead of the game," Butler said.
One of the report's researchers is Robert Balfanz at Johns Hopkins University, whose ongoing work on the nation's dropout problem hasn't made him a favorite among Florida educators.
In previous work in 2007, he dubbed high schools with low graduation rates "dropout factories" -- places where 60 percent or fewer students graduated in four years -- and pinpointed many such schools in Florida.
In fact, he found that 51 percent of Florida's public high schools earned that title. Some of them were long-time struggling schools, such as Oak Ridge High in Orange County, but others given that label were generally viewed more positively, such as A-rated Boone High.
Balfanz's work calculates graduation rates by comparing ninth-grade enrollment to 12th-grade enrollment four years later.
State educators say they follow each student -- accounting for kids who leave the state, switch schools or enroll in private schools, for example -- and, therefore, they report a more accurate picture of who earns a diploma.
Florida says its high school graduation rate was 75.4 percent in 2008, up from 69 percent in 2003.