The DOE’s commissioned study on high school dropouts, which was discussed here on our blog a couple of days ago, is evidently not going to see the public light of day. Instead, we have a paper copy of the prepared summary that DOE used to report to the Board of Regents this week; no URL.
The study was conducted by the Parthenon Group in Boston, many of whose founding and senior partners used to work for Bain and Co., a super-high-end management consulting firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy. Parthenon’s roster of talent looks more suited to restructuring the U.S. banking industry than preventing high school dropouts.
What Parthenon Group found for $2.6 million (paid for by the Gates Foundation) were mostly multiple ways to analyze the same data. Unsurprising to anyone who teaches high school is their finding that the best predictor of high school dropouts in New York are students who are over-aged and under-credited for their grades. In identifying effective options for the OA-UCs, as they call them, transfer schools–small full-time high schools focused on their needs–and young adult borough centers (YABCs) that offer evening programs both work well to increase graduation rates. Of these, transfer schools have the best track record.
Essentially, the Parthenon study endorses the DOE’s “Multiple Pathways” strategy of developing transfer schools, YABCs and a few new GED models. These are strategies the chancellor effectively canceled when he first took office and then reconstituted, with his branding, when the need for them became obvious. The instructional strategies Parthenon identifies–adolescent literacy programs and literacy across the curriculum, targeted interventions, and improvements in special eduction and English Language Learner programs–sound pretty generic. The “levers of change” they identify are “empowement, leadership and accountability.” Um, OK.
Compare the Parthenon study, or as much as we can know about it, to a graduation study [PPT] by the Philadelphia Education Fund and Johns Hopkins University. They began with middle schools. While they acknowledge the well-known risk factors of entering high school behind in math and literacy, and being retained in 9th grade, they examine what happens before students get to high school. In addition, they look at indicators like attendance, behavior and effort, realizing that the attitudes and values students bring to school have as much impact on graduation rates as does credit accumulation (or lack of it).
The PEF and Hopkins researchers followed a large group of middle school students for eight years and found four factors that can powerfully predict students in danger of falling off the graduation track in 6th grade (less than 80% attendance, a poor final behavior mark, failing math or failing English).
Early intervention is the obvious implication, but the researchers also have much to say about changes that middle schools should put in place. Chief among these are acknowledging the impact of adolescence and acknowledging the impact of poverty, offering strong instruction, school-wide programs and professional development. Keeping track of absences and intervening early, assuring safety in and out of school, involving families and creating effective, targeted interventions are among the recommendations. Teacher teams, help with grief counseling, anger management and social service coordination are others.
Of course, for at-risk high school students there is no going back to 6th grade and starting over. The system must help these students by offering every opportunity and every encouragement to take and pass the necessary courses. But as the Parthenon study found, there are 140,000 young adults in New York City who have already dropped out or are in danger of doing so. The problem doesn’t start in high school. And Parthenon’s descriptive statistics don’t really get under the skin of the problem. (For example, Parthenon says that raising 8th grade exam scores increases graduation rates. Well yes, but first kids have to be able to do that.) The PEF-Hopkins study does more. It challenges the structure and content of middle school and our approach to adolescence. It acknowledges the complexity of the problem. It offers data-driven conclusions but they are richer and deeper.
With due respect, Chancellor Klein and the DOE might have found the same richness and depth right here in NYC public schools. Middle school improvement and dropout prevention are tough issues but the experience needed to address them is not as readily available in the offices of Boston business consultants as it is right here. They’d just have to ask, and then listen.
Tagged: middle school
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