Retention - Who Will benefit?
Retention And Social Promotion
Criteria for who benefits from retention.
Tag: flunk drop out retention social promotion graduation rate exit exam left behind Light's retention scale
U.S. STATES: DROP OUTS- PUSHED OUT
2008 Nationwide, about one in three high school students drops out before graduating. Nearly 1.2 million students drop out each school year -- about 7,000 every school day, or one every 26 seconds. http://www.americaspromise.org/APAPage.aspx?id=9172DROP OUTS or PUSHED OUT
Learn about the financial incentive to avoid the costs associated with the exit exam test which is what promotes pushing children out of school and what is at the bottom of why they really drop out.
It is better for the tax payer to spend the money to teach people to pass the test.
IF you don't spend the tax money to educate the child so they can pass the exit exam then they won't graduate.
IF they don't graduate then you spend the tax money to help them live.
How many students really graduate from High School in the U.S. 2007
The new report compares graduation rates reported by the states and the U.S. Department of Education to those reported by independent researchers. While the average difference between state and independent sources is about 13 percent, the gap ranges from a low of 4 percent to a high of 32 percent. Additionally, the report considers the costs of the dropout crisis and identifies three core areas that are fundamental to calculating, reporting, and improving accurate graduation rates:
(1) The need for all states to use the same accurate graduation rate calculations;
(2) The need for a state data system that tracks individual student data from the time students enter the educational system until they leave it; and
(3) The need for federal policy that meaningfully holds high schools accountable for improving student achievement on test scores and increasing graduation rates so that low-performing students are not unnecessarily held back or encouraged to leave school without a diploma.
Alliance for Excellent Education, illustrates the discrepancies in graduation rates reported by government and independent sources. Misleading graduation rate calculations, inadequate systems to track students throughout their education, and lack of accountability by the school are undermining efforts to understand and increase the nations graduation rate.
5/05 PAYING THE PRICE FOR THE DROPOUT EPIDEMIC
Two facts are closely linked: Indiana was 44th in the nation in job creation last year, and it's 46th in the educational attainment level of its population. The first number won't rise until the second is confronted. Most dropouts are condemned to chronic unemployment or underemployment. Only 35 percent of black dropouts between ages 16 and 24 are currently employed. Sixty percent of all dropouts were unemployed last year. Indianapolis and Indiana are paying a heavy price for failing to deal realistically with the dropout epidemic. At a time when an educated work force is essential to economic development, almost three of 10 students in Indiana are not graduating from high school. Prison also snares many, especially the men. About 37 percent of black male dropouts have done a stint in prison, according to Princeton University researcher Bruce Western. Sixty-eight percent of state prison inmates -- including 27 percent of whites -- were dropouts, according to a 1997 survey by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Legally all children up to the age of 21 years old in New York, are allowed by law to stay in High School. Texas Education Code, section 25.001 students who are at least five years old and under 21 years old on September 1 of that school year are eligible to attend school on a tuition-free basis. Also, attending school is compulsory for students who are at least six years old and under 18 years old (TEC 25.085). Is your state pushing kids out?
RETENTION
Find the compulsory age children must start school and at what age they may leave the system at the Education Commission of the States however each state may have it's own law governing the legal age limit (ex: 21 years old) each child has the right to stay in High School and may NOT pushed out. "Elisa Hyman, a lawyer with Advocates for Children helps students who have been pushed out gain reinstatement. The Department of Education classifies each student who leaves school under one of dozens of codes, it does not release - or apparently even compile - information on how many students leave under which circumstances and what becomes of them." Source
RETENTION: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN IT WILL DO ANY GOOD TO RETAIN THE STUDENT?
High-School Exit Exams Linked to Higher Dropout Rates, http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i45/45a01401.htm
Since 1979, a growing number of states have required high-school students to pass exit examinations before they can receive diplomas. wo teams of scholars have written papers that support the more-harm-than-good thesis. In a recent working paper, Thomas S. Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College, and Brian A. Jacob, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard
University, reported that students in states with relatively easy exit exams are roughly 4 percent more likely to drop out of high school than similar students in states with no exams. In states with relatively difficult exit exams, students are 5.5 percent more likely to drop out than their counterparts in states with no exams.
Education Commission of the States show the compulsory age children must start school and at what age they may leave the system at the however each state may have it's own law governing the legal age limit (ex: 21 years old) each child has the right to stay in High School and may NOT pushed out. "Elisa Hyman, a lawyer with Advocates for Children helps students who have been pushed out gain reinstatement. The Department of Education classifies each student who leaves school under one of dozens of codes, it does not release - or apparently even compile - information on how many students leave under which circumstances and what becomes of them." Source
TEST - State High School Exit Exams
2006 State High School Exit Exams: A Challenging Year describes the remediation services and other support that states provide to help students pass the exams.
High School Graduation Rates debate between Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, and Jay P. Greene
U.S. STATES: Drop Outs - Pushed Out - Standards No Child Left Behind
Find the compulsory age children must start school and at what age they may leave the system at the Education Commission of the States however each state may have it's own law governing the legal age limit (ex: 21 years old) each child has the right to stay in High School and may NOT pushed out.
THE DIMENSIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PHILADELPHIAS DROPOUT CRISIS 10/26
Only about half of the ninth graders in Philadelphia's public schools graduate in four years, and 30,000 young people dropped out of that citys high schools between 2000 and 2005, creating a "dropout crisis" with far-reaching economic and social consequences. But dropping out is predictable and preventable, especially in large city public schools that produce many of the nations dropouts, says Johns Hopkins University researchers Ruth Curran Neild and Robert Balfanz. In "Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphias Dropout Crisis, 2000-05," PDF they draw on extensive data from Philadelphia schools and social service agencies not only to establish the problem but also to provide insight on how cities across the country can solve their dropout problem. "This report can help big city school districts gain a deeper understanding of the dimensions and characteristics of the dropout crisis. It provides a road map on how to find and establish the best prevention and intervention strategies to keep all students on the graduation track." said Balfanz, a research scientist and co-director of Talent Development High Schools at Hopkins.
TRUSTED STATE EVALUATORS ARE CHEATERS. THE TAXPAYER ISN'T TOLD THE TRUTH.
TEXAS
While Texas has one of the most sophisticated systems for tracking its public school students, the dropout and graduation rates that it culls from that data are among the most misleading in the nation, reports Jennifer Radcliffe.http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/4239893.html The state's official graduation rate hovers around 85 percent, but researchers at some of the country's top universities put Texas' graduation rate below 70 percent. In urban districts, including Dallas and Houston, less than half of some minority groups earn diplomas in four years -- a significantly smaller number than what the districts self-report, they say. "They have the gold standard (for data collection). Unfortunately ... the gold has turned into fool's gold," said Daniel Losen, a senior education law and policy associate with the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. "Texas has dramatically inflated its graduation rates ... for years." State education leaders say the research is based on old data and highlights problems that have already been addressed. National studies show that Texas' statistics omit about 78,000 teens who might otherwise be counted as dropouts. "It's a sham of accountability," Losen said. [1]
VOYAGER EXPANDED LEARNING READING PROGRAM AND READING FIRST CHEATERS BUSTED
2006 State High School Exit Exams: A Challenging Year
On August 16, 2006, the Center on Education Policy released its fifth annual report on state high school exit exams. The report, State High School Exit Exams: A Challenging Year, analyzes the difficulties that states faced in 2005-06 as they implemented these exams and describes the remediation services and other support that states provide to help students pass the exams. View report and press release here.
High School Graduation Rates
There is an intense debate occurring about the accuracy of the statistics used in describing the numbers of students graduating from high school. On April 27, 2006 the Center on Education Policy sponsored a debate about this issue between Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, and Jay P. Greene, endowed chair and head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and a Manhattan Institute senior fellow. Listen to audio file of the debate: (Real Media Player / MP3)
More College Students Drop Out Than Graduate
BOSTON (Reuters)8/15/01 - Fewer than half of U.S. college students make it to graduation, which means that Americans have a better chance of getting an accurate weather report than they have of getting a university degree.
Less than 50 percent of students entering four-year colleges or universities actually graduate, Council for Aid to Education (CAE) researchers said in a report. ''And that's a conservative estimate,'' said Richard Hersh who co-authored the report on the quality of higher education for the National Governors Association.
As for the weather reports, a spokesman for the U.S. National Weather Service said: ``If you want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow, then we're accurate 88 percent of the time.''
Backing up the CAE report, figures from ACT, formerly the American College Testing Service, show the graduation rate at four-year public institutions fell to 41.9 percent in 2000, while the rate at private schools was 55.1 percent.
Peer Committee Report for Improving High School Graduation Rates
Education Policy Analysis Archives http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n23/
Volume 8 Number 23 May 12, 2000 ISSN 1068-2341
School-based Standard Testing by Craig Bolon
Planwright Systems Corporation
Brookline, MA (USA)
Official Texas statistics claim reductions in school dropouts, but independent studies consistent with U. S. government data show persistent increases, with 42 percent of all students failing to receive a high school diploma as of 1998 ("Longitudinal Attrition Rates," 1999). Students identified by Texas as black or Hispanic are disproportionately affected. In some schools 100 percent of students with limited English proficiency drop out (IDRA, 1998). Illiteracy remains a major problem in Texas, and it appears to be worsening.
The NAEP High School Transcript Study
Everything you always wanted to know about high school transcripts…from the U.S. Department of Education. (HSTS) provides information on course offerings and course-taking patterns in the nation's secondary schools, and the relationship of student course-taking patterns to achievement at grade 12 as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Dropout scandal revisited - Grand jury will hear case over HISD's data reporting http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/education/3384226
How to save money, just drop the students out.. You don't have to spend money.
A Harris County grand jury is scheduled to hear evidence Friday in the 3-year-old Houston Independent School District dropout-reporting scandal, a prosecutor confirmed Wednesday. Assistant District Attorney Terese Buess, of the office's Public Integrity Division, would not say what sort of criminal charges might be under consideration or who might be a focus of the probe.
8/30/03 Houston Chronicle Report rips Sharpstown for dropout fiasco http://www.edailynews.net/articles/ednetviewer.asp?a=7882&z=6 A legal firm looking into the dropout fiasco at Sharpstown High School found that a "complete breakdown in the chain of command" allowed the school's top management to report to the state dropout data they should have known was false.
"More than 50 % of students fail high-stakes graduation test" By Jessica Brice
http://www.signonsandiego.com/News/education/20020930-1012-ca-highschoolexam.html
ASSOCIATED PRESS September 30, 2002
Summary: More than 1/2 flunked math and english sections in 2002
Black and Hispanic students had the highest rate of failure this year, with only 28 percent of black students and 30 percent of Hispanic students passing. On the other hand, 70 percent of Asian students and 65 percent of white students passed the test.
Test was created in 1999 as one of Gov. Gray Davis' first education-improvement proposals. Starting in 2004, california 10th-grader students must pass the California High School Exit Examination to graduate. Students who don't pass will have seven chances to retake the test or they won't receive a high school diploma.
School results http://signonsandiego.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/static/cahsee.html/CA
Critics say the test, given to , unfairly hurts low-income and minority students because they don't have access to the same educational resources as more affluent students At least half the states in the nation have a high school exit exam.
Report Disputes U.S. High School Graduation Rates By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A03
Barely half of all black, Hispanic and Native American students who entered U.S. high schools in 2000 will receive diplomas this year, according to a new report that challenges conventional methods of calculating graduation rates.
Of all students who entered ninth grade four years ago, only 68 % are expected to graduate with regular diplomas this year. The rates for minorities are considerably lower -- 50 % for blacks, 51 % for Native Americans and 53 % for Hispanics -- according to a measure devised by the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
Methods of calculating graduation rates are a perpetual subject of debate , and there are many differences in the ways states and school systems report data. By any measure, though, blacks and Hispanics graduate at lower rates than whites, a situation that has long concerned educators.
"We will never dissolve the hegemony of Jim Crow segregation . . . unless we get serious about this problem," said Christopher Edley, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, which joined the Urban Institute to write "Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis."
Some states determine the graduation rate by comparing the number of 12th graders at the beginning of the year to the number of graduates. The prevailing measure, devised by the National Center for Education Statistics, considers the number of students who graduate and the number thought to have dropped out.
Christopher Swanson, the Urban Institute research associate who devised the new method, said that many dropouts go uncounted and that his "cumulative promotion index," which considers the number of students enrolled each year and the number who receive diplomas after four years, is more authentic.
Maryland recently reported a graduation rate of 85 %; the cumulative promotion index, however, puts the state's rate at 75 %. Virginia's declared rate, also 85 %, compares to a promotion index of 74 %. By both measures, whites were significantly more likely than minorities to graduate.
The District reported a 64 % graduation rate; the promotion index was 65 %. A racial gap was not calculated because of the small numbers of whites.
According to the report, the national graduation rate is 72 % for girls and 64 % for boys.
The authors criticized the federal No Child Left Behind law for requiring that test score data but not graduation rates be broken down by race. They suggested that the law's requirement that schools meet escalating proficiency goals, as well as the proliferation of state high school exit exams, might encourage school officials to nudge out lower-performing students. Kati Hay cock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, agreed that graduation rates are worse than is generally reported, but she opposed the notion that federal testing requirements cause students to leave. "How can you possibly suggest that just making educators accountable for student learning makes TEACHERS CHEAT and push students out of school?" she said.
The Impact of High Stakes Graduation Tests on High School Dropout
http://lexis.pop.upenn.edu/news/colloquium/2001fall/WarrenEdwards.pdf
Engagement and Dropping Out of School: A Life-Course Perspective
http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/sp-ps/arb-dgra/publications/research/2001docs/W-01-1-10/iw-01-1-10e.pdf
RESEARCH AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY
Overall, neither social promotion nor retention leads to high performance. If the goal is to bring low-performing students up to the higher standards now being asserted across the nation, neither retention nor social promotion is effective. In different studies, one or the other has been found to offer an advantage, but neither has been found to offer a large, lasting advantage, and neither leads to high performance. When kids are locked up, what happens to their education? A profile of juvenile crime.The responsibility for educating incarcerated juveniles rests, for the most part, with the local school district.
Types of crimes
- 35 percent are classified as person crimes, such as aggravated assault, simple assault, and criminal homicide.
- 29 % are property crimes, such as burglary, auto theft, and arson.
- 13 % are technical violations, such as violating parole and probation.
- 10 % are public order violations, such as carrying weapons.
- 9 % are drug offenses.
- 4 % are status offenses.*
Crimes by age, gender, and race
- 65 % of juvenile offenders under age 18 are 15 to 17 years old.
- 87 % of juvenile offenders are boys; the peak age for boys in placement is 16 or 17.
- 13 % of juvenile offenders are girls; the peak age for girls in placement is 15 or 16.
- 63 % of all juvenile offenders are minorities (40 % black, 19 % Hispanic, 2 % American Indian, and 2 % Asian); 37 % are white.
Types of facilities
- 85 % of detained** and 68 % of committed** juveniles are held in public facilities; juveniles who commit less serious offenses are more often held in private facilities.
- 70 % are held in locked facilities; most juveniles in public facilities and tribal facilities are confined to locked placements.
- Boys more often than girls, and minority juveniles more often than white youth, are held in locked facilities.
- 7,600 juveniles younger than 18 are in adult jails nationwide.
* Status offenses are behaviors that are not law violations for adults, such as running away, truancy, or incorrigibility. ** Detained juveniles include those awaiting adjudication in a juvenile court; those whose disposition is pending before or after their case is heard; and those awaiting a hearing or trial in an adult criminal court. Committed juveniles are those placed in a facility or jail as the result of a juvenile or criminal court order.
Source: Sickmund, Melissa. “Juveniles in Corrections.” U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, June 2004.
Light's Retention Scale is a measure with a number of ranking factors such as age, size, have they been retained before, special ed.
Resources and Advice For New Teachers
Standards
Too Many Current Teachers Are Underqualified
Fewer than 75% of all teachers have studied child development, learning, and teaching methods, have degrees in their subject area, and have passed state licensing requirements Nearly one-fourth (23%) of all secondary teachers do not have even a college minor in their main teaching field. This is true for more than 30% of mathematics teachers.
Those Who Can't Teach New Teachers Flunk in Massachusetts 7/7/98
An opinion by John Silber, Chancellor of Boston University and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, helped to design the test given to prospective teachers in Mass.BOSTON -- This spring, Massachusetts administered its first statewide test for candidates hoping to teach in the public schools. The recent announcement of the results has provoked astonishment and outrage. Almost 60 percent of the candidates failed. Thirty percent failed a basic test in reading and writing, and the failure rate on subject-matter tests varied from 63 percent in mathematics to 18 percent in physical education.
When the results were published, the reactions were predictable: approval from those appalled by the decline in the quality of public schools and howls of complaint from education professionals, including college professors, deans and college presidents.
TEACHERS ARE IDIOTS by Jerry Taylor
Develop Technology Skills of Professors
To see what some reviewers of research about retention have concluded, take a look at these sources.
-- Karweit, M. L. (1999). Grade retention: Prevalence, timing, and effects. (Report No. 33). Baltimore, MD: Center For Research On The Education Of Students Placed At Risk, Johns Hopkins University.
-- Pomplun, M. (1988). Retention: The earlier, the better? Journal of Educational Research, 81, 281286.
Books top
Children's Scholarship Fund with Merrill Lynch do a Education Conference on How Entrepreneurs Can Improve Education. and the merits of moving to a more market-driven system.
The astonishing and largely unknown history of diversity and markets in American education. Diane Ravitch will focus her remarks on the history of New York City, primarily 20th century. Andrew Coulson will discuss early American education history, highlighting the diversity of educational options in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and covering the foundation of the Common Schools. Joseph P. Viteritti will focus on a brief history of 20th century reform efforts in elementary and secondary education, beginning with Brown vs. Board of Education decision and Milton Friedman's voucher plan, and continuing to the present day.
Juvenile Justice http://www.fape.org/justice/juv_justice.htm
The content of this website below also serves as a reminder that the cost of dropouts is not just to the individual but to society as well.
The American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center's "Parents Manual"
- Resources on Transition of Incarcerated Youth
- Youth with Disabilities in the Juvenile Justice System
- National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center
- Youth Crime/Adult Time: Is Justice Served?
- Parenting Resources for the 21st Century online guide is an initiative of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (the Council)
- Education as Crime Prevention: Providing Education to Prisoners
- An occasional research paper from The Center on Crime, Communities, and Culture
- Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report: Minorities in the Juvenile Justice System
- National Center on Education, Disability, and Juvenile Justice (EDJJ)
Legislative Note: Both the US House and Senate amended their versions of the Juvenile Justice Act to allow schools to suspend or expel a child with a disability in the same manner as a child without disability in cases involving weapons. If schools do not provide educational services during this particular type of disciplinary action for non-disabled children, then they do not have to provide educational services to children with disabilities. There are slight differences between the two amendments, and an agreement will be worked out in conference committee. 2003
