Since 1994, the Student Empowerment Project (St.E.P.),
a grassroots community-based organization, has advocated on a broad range of issues facing rural communities throughout California, including improving the quality of education in public schools, and championing student and parent rights, immigrant rights, environmental justice, and for social, political and economic justice for our communities.

St.E.P. can be contacted at:

The Student Empowerment Project                                    
P.O. Box 143                                                                              
Watsonville, CA 95076

Or via e-mail at studentpower@msn.com

EDUCATION NEWS ARTICLES

But the system cannot yet transfer records of individual students to another district if their parents move - something that would help the new school place the student without retesting.Last month, the state received a $33 million bid for a new computer information system that will allow annual student information to be stored and manipulated by researchers seeking improved teaching methods.

The $65 million cut from the budget was intended to help school districts provide quality information for the new system, the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System.“CALPADS will enable schools, districts, and the state to more accurately track student attendance, graduation and dropout rates and to measure individual student achievement over time,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said while urging restoration of the $65 million.

The $33 million bid for a new system from a consortium that includes IBM, Microsoft and ESP Solutions must be evaluated by the state Department of Finance, which has clashed in the past with the Department of Education.

Under the plan, the new computer system would be operated for a year by the bidding consortium and then turned over to the current information system led by Brawn.The state’s chief information officer, Clark Kelso, charged with preventing computer fiascoes that have plagued the state in the past, said he is “heartened” by the success of the current student information system.But, Kelso said, a state computer system that relies on collaboration by local government agencies is “precisely the type of project that you do worry about.”

Two years ago, a Harvard University study criticized the state for not having given students identification numbers, something that has been done since then. The Harvard study concluded that the high school dropout rate in California was 29 percent, much higher than the 13 percent rate being reported by the state at the time.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune, July 6, 2007

Editorial

Student data are priceless

SGV Tribune 7/5/07

It is a shame - as well as ironic - that good education programs are being removed from the state budget proposal because of a budget error on education funding.

According to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, who visited our editorial board Monday, budget negotiators in the governor’s office and the Legislature over the weekend found a

$350 million shortfall in money that was to go to under-funded school districts. To make up for that shortfall, they were told to cut from other education programs.

Being chopped out of the governor’s May revise was about $65 million - approximately two years of funding - for something called the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System or CALPADS. We would like to see that money restored.

Educrats love complicated acronyms, but this one is quite easy to explain: CALPADS is a computerized, student tracking system that would finally provide the state Department of Education with reliable graduation and dropout numbers from 9,000 school districts containing 6.2 million students.

When we asked O’Connell what was the graduation rate for California high schools, he replied: “We have no idea.”

Imagine, the head of the largest school system in the country, not knowing the rate at which school kids succeed or don’t succeed. Sounds ridiculous but it’s true.

Local districts struggle with this calculation since students move, go back to their home country, or stop attending any school. “We’ve had instances in which a student dies and that is counted as a dropout,” said O’Connell.

Most say school districts severely underestimate dropout rates. A Harvard study said only about 71 percent of California high schoolers graduate per year and the figure for African-American students is lower, 56.6 percent, and is about 60 percent for Latino students.

California has been trying to implement a student tracking system since 2002. While the idea was approved in concept and some pilot programs have been launched, the funding to hire and/or train people at the district level to work the new system has not materialized. We do not support unfunded mandates. That’s why training money must be included in a final budget or the program becomes a bureaucratic millstone for local schools.

We understand that correcting a school funding error in the budget takes precedence. But funding for this new tracking system is long overdue. For the cost of about $32 million a year - a fraction of the $45 billion budgeted from the general fund for K-12 education - it is a bargain.

Russell W. Rumberger: Seeking solutions to dropout crisis

By Russell W. Rumberger -
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, July 12, 2007

Figures released by the Department of Education last month show California’s high school graduation rate in 2006 was the lowest in 10 years. The estimated 170,000 students who failed to graduate from the 2006 class will cost the state $46 billion in lost earnings and $2 billion in lost state taxes. Clearly the state must act to address its growing dropout crisis.

To do so, we first need to understand the causes of this crisis. The sharp decline in the graduation rate from 2005 to 2006, which produced an estimated 20,000 additional dropouts, was most likely due to the requirement that students had to pass the California High School Exit Exam in order to receive a diploma. While the merits of this exam continue to be debated, it nonetheless represents an additional hurdle for California’s public high school students.

But the roots of California’s dropout crisis form well before students enter ninth grade. In fact, they begin before students enter kindergarten.

The high proportion of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, the large rates of childhood poverty and the lower participation rates in quality preschools mean that many students in California begin school at a considerable disadvantage. For instance, socioeconomically disadvantaged students begin kindergarten about 3 1/2 months behind middle class students in math, and 2 1/2 months behind in reading. Low achievement in elementary school is an early predictor of dropping out in high school.

Early behavior problems and negative attitudes toward school also predict dropping out. At the end of fifth grade, one in five California students shows low perceived ability and interest in math, or problems with social behavior, such as fighting or arguing with other students. And one in 11 students is below grade level, one of the strongest predictors of dropping out.

Although existing research reveals some of the factors that may explain California’s high dropout rate, additional research is needed. That is why the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation and the Walter S. Johnson Foundation have joined together to support the California Dropout Research Project (lmri.ucsb.edu/dropouts). The project will synthesize existing research and undertake new research to inform policymakers and the larger public about the nature of — and potential solutions to — the dropout problem in California.

The project has commissioned 15 research studies that are examining the causes, costs and potential solutions to the state’s dropout crisis. It has also established a policy committee comprised of state legislators, researchers and educators who will use this research to draft a policy agenda to address this critical educational problem.

Although the committee will not release its final report until January, two important issues have already been identified. One concerns the need for a better student data system. The state is now creating a longitudinal student data system that can be used to track students’ progress through school. But the existing system will not be sufficient to address the dropout problem without tracking students’ mobility in and out of the public system during elementary and secondary school, as well as their educational and labor market experiences after leaving high school.

The other issue concerns how to solve the problem. A frequent policy response to any educational problem is to create a targeted categorical program to address it. But as the recent Stanford-led school finance study showed, California suffers from too many categorical programs that limit the flexibility of schools to effectively address the needs of their students. The solution to California’s dropout crisis must involve more than a new categorical program, and it must focus on the preschool, elementary and middle school levels as well as high schools.

Solving California’s dropout crisis is a formidable challenge that will require a long-term, comprehensive strategy to not only improve the state’s public schools, but to strengthen the other social institutions that contribute to student educational success.

Let’s keep better track of high school dropouts

By Luis A. Alejo

I was pleased to see some response by school administrators and community members regarding the high numbers of students disappearing from my alma mater, Watsonville High School. It is often the issue that so many like to ignore or sweep under the rug.

But also troubling is the denial of the very serious nature of the crisis by Watsonville High Principal Murry Schekman in his recent column. That is why there continues to be much inaction; administration tries to console the public by saying the problem is really not that bad or the costs are not as high as I project.

In my previous column, I intentionally referred to disappearance rates instead of dropout rates, because the current dropout data is completely flawed. For instance, the dropout data for WHS states that there was a zero percent dropout rate for the class of 2004 when in fact 48.9 percent disappeared and never graduated from WHS.

In addition, the PVUSD does not know what has happened to all these students who have disappeared from Watsonville High. Even Schekman had to contact a couple of fellow principals to know how many students went to those schools or graduated. That’s a major part of the problem. The PVUSD does not track students to know exactly where they end up.

For instance, Schekman cites 55 students who graduated from New School and about another 288 from Renaissance High in an attempt to account for some of the 2,290 students who did not graduate from Watsonville High from 2001 through 2006. But what happened to the other 1,947 students who are unaccounted for?

Moreover, there seems to be an equally serious problem at those other schools. For instance, statistics from the California Department of Education show that out of all 111 seniors who enrolled at New School Alternative Program between 2001 through 2006, only 45 graduated, not 55. And what happened to those other 66 students, or 60 percent, who did not graduate from that school?

Instead of denying the severity of the crisis, I would like to see more being done at the school. Here are some other strategies that could help.

• Longitudinal student tracking system: The PVUSD should create a pilot longitudinal student computer tracking system that will significantly help the district know what is happening to students who disappear. About 270 school districts have already piloted similar tracking programs with a single life-time school identification number. Besides knowing what is occurring with WHS students, the tracking system should be developed to allow the various student support programs and services to better communicate and know what each is doing for a particular student.
• Increase guidance counselors: In 2004, there was only one counselor for about every 600 students at Watsonville High. This is a very limited number of guidance counselors to assist students with course selection, the A-G college requirements, personal issues, or college applications, among many other vital services. The American School Counselor Association recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:250 in order to achieve maximum program effectiveness. An extremely high number of WHS students are not fulfilling the A-G college requirements and there are hundreds of students who begin 12th grade but are not graduating. In all six years, there were a total of 838 high-school seniors who began 12th grade at WHS but did not graduate.
• Replicate successful models: The PVUSD must look to successful models to replicate in Watsonville. One model to look into is San Jose Downtown College Prep, which targets low-achieving urban students. A significant number of its students are also Latino, economically disadvantaged and are English learners. Their primary goal is to ensure that “at-risk” students are able to matriculate into four-year universities. Its first graduating class in 2004 resulted in 94 percent of them attending universities.
• More intervention programs in early years: More alternative and intervention programs must be created for the middle and elementary students to help prevent students from dropping out once they enter high school. In addition, the district should work to ensure that as many children as possible enroll in quality pre-school programs.
• One-stop center for student services: There are many different types of student service programs in the PVUSD. However, there is almost no coordination between all these services. One possible way to address this problem is to house all these student services in one building in order to create a one-stop student services center that will allow for coordination among the different programs and a comprehensive case management approach to serving students.
• District-wide school improvement plan: There continues to be no district-wide school-improvement strategy despite the fact that almost all schools in Watsonville are in program-improvement status under the No Child Left Behind Act. There are only piecemeal reforms that are not part of any larger comprehensive plan that has the buy-in and support from teachers, parents, students and community members.

Of course, there are many other strategies and interventions that should be considered. Dealing with the serious crisis at Watsonville High School will require a comprehensive, multi-strategy approach, and efforts must be ongoing throughout the next several years as a community-wide effort.

Luis A. Alejo is a local public interest attorney and the director of the Student Empowerment Project.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 17, 2007

OPINION

Dropout crisis continues in Watsonville

By Luis Angel Alejo

Last week, high school graduation ceremonies took place throughout the Pajaro Valley, where students celebrated with classmates, family and friends.

But a close look at the most recent graduation statistics of Watsonville High School reveals an ever-worsening dropout crisis where 50 percent of all students who enter as freshmen do not graduate by senior year. Out of all the public high schools in Santa Cruz County, Watsonville High has the lowest graduation rates and the highest disappearance rates.

The current graduation and dropout data used statewide, based on the National Center for Education Statistics NCES formula, is completely flawed as reported by the Harvard Civil Rights Project and the Education Trust. The inaccurate NCES data only reports an 8.8 percent dropout rate for the Watsonville High School class of 2006. However, when the more accurate Cumulative Promotion Index CPI is used to longitudinally track students starting in ninth grade, actually 49.1 percent disappeared and never graduated by 12th grade.

Most parents are unaware of how many students are disappearing from the educational pipeline. The longitudinal data for six cohorts of students at Watsonville High, 2001 through 2006, shows an alarming 2,290 students disappeared and did not graduate by the 12th grade.

The PVUSD has no way of knowing what has happened to these students since there is no system to track where these students have gone. The graduation rates of our students are the ultimate measure of high school accountability and the numbers of Watsonville High continue to be dismal.

The costs

When students fail to graduate from high school, there are profound social and economic consequences on their lives and those of their future children. Both the Harvard Civil Rights Project and Education Trust reported that students who drop out face higher unemployment rates, earn lower wages, have poorer health and are more likely to be incarcerated or rely on public assistance.

The U.S. Census estimates that students who drop out will earn $270,000 less than a high school graduate over their lifetime. In addition, young adult Latinos who finish high school earn 36 percent more than those who drop out according to a 2002 Census Bureau report. There are also huge societal costs by students who are ill-prepared to enter the work force and participate in civic life. For our state, there is higher unemployment, increased crime and billions of dollars in lost tax revenue.

According to renowned education researcher Russell Rumberger of UC Santa Barbara, the 66,657 students who dropped out statewide from California public schools in 2002-03 will cost the state $14 million in lost wages over their lifetimes and add 1,225 inmates to our state’s prisons at a cost of $73 million.

Undoubtedly, our children, community and society suffer tremendously. Increasing the numbers of students who graduate reduces crime and increases the productivity of students throughout their life time.

Millions still being lost

In addition, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District continues to lose millions of dollars in lost revenue each year as a result of students disappearing from the educational pipeline. For each student who is not in school, PVUSD loses at least $5,216 in average daily attendance funding in base-limit revenue each year. When hundreds of students in a cohort are tracked over four high school years, the amount in lost revenue is enormous.

For the Watsonville High School class of 2006 alone, PVUSD lost a potential of more than $3 million as a result of 439 students disappearing over four years. The PVUSD would make substantial financial gains by keeping local students in school and establishing strategies and interventions that will retain and bring students back into the PVUSD.

Problem will get worse

This serious crisis will only be exacerbated with the new policy approved in January by the current PVUSD board of trustees that prohibits students from participating in graduation ceremonies if they have not passed the California High School Exit Exam, despite completing all other graduation requirements.

The majority of students at Watsonville High who have yet to pass the exam are English-language learners. These students face additional barriers and are being severely punished for not passing a single test. It is devastating to deny them the day that all high school students look forward to and is only causing more to drop out.

The recent report by expert Norm Gold on English learners in the PVUSD demonstrated that the district has been failing to provide its EL students with a quality education and yet, the board of trustees found it acceptable to take harsh, punitive action against these students at the end of high school for its own abysmal failings.

The PVUSD board should change its graduation policy to allow students who earn a “certificate of completion” to participate in the graduation ceremonies as were permitted before. This proposal would be a strong incentive to keep students from dropping out, complete all their other graduation requirements, and to take the exit exam one last time. Last year, many PVUSD students did just that by later passing the exam without having lost out on their big day.

The bottom line is that much more must be done for los desaparecidos, those students who disappear from the education pipeline. However, very little has been done by the PVUSD to address this crisis despite the fact that this issue was brought to its attention in 2005 along with possible ways to address the problem.

Luis A. Alejo is a local public interest attorney and the director of the Student Empowerment Project.

Watsonville High School

                     9th   10th   11th    12th      Graduated     Disappeared

                   grade grade grade grade

Class of 2006   895   867   751   637         456 (50.9%)   439 (49.1%)

Class of 2005   837   796   706   594         485 (57.9%)   352 (42.1%)

Class of 2004   946   906   772   643         483 (51.1%)   463 (48.9%)

Class of 2003   994   954   834   702         532 (53.5%)   462 (46.5%)

Class of 2002   795   792   704   610         467 (58.7%)   328 (41.3%)

Class of 2001   783   733   668   612         537 (68.6%)   246 (31.4%)

SOURCE: California Department of Education

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-dropouts17jul17,0,798106.story?coll=la-tot-opinion&track=ntothtml

EDITORIAL

California’s dropout problem

A state senator offers a package of bills that could help keep in school some of the 150,000 kids who drop out each year.

CALIFORNIA’S CHILDREN are abandoning school at the rate of about 150,000 a year - a number equivalent to the population of Torrance, or Irvine, or all of Imperial County. Fewer than 70% of ninth-graders statewide will graduate from high school, and in some districts the percentage drops to less than half. Shockingly, this is not particularly a problem for schools, which are ranked primarily on their test scores. If marginal students leave, it only helps their averages.

The result is a calamity in education that has almost no effect on schools, and that paradoxically has allowed schools to remain on the margins of a public debate about how to keep kids in the classroom. Fortunately, the Legislature is taking note.

The stakes are high. In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa forced an awareness of the dropout crisis in a district that has coolly accepted the slide of thousands of children into failure. We can squabble about the exact percentage of students leaving schools in L.A., but more than 35,000 students disappeared from the class of 2005 between the first day of ninth grade and the last day of 12th grade. Where do they go? Too often, dropouts fall into gangs and crime. Los Angeles is the gang capital of the nation. California has the largest prison population in the country, and more than 80% of the state’s prison population did not graduate from high school.

Reducing the dropout rate statewide will require a profound rethinking of how we encourage students to stay in school and how we hold schools accountable for keeping them there. State Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) has introduced a package of bills that starts that process, creating a sturdy framework for reform. The legislation, now in the Assembly, would hold schools accountable for their dropout rates and offer funding to help them engage students in the classroom, and it takes a thoughtful approach to curtailing the excessive hours some students work.

Most notably, SB 219 would add dropout rates for eighth- and ninth-graders to the Academic Performance Index. By law, 60% of the API must be devoted to test scores, but the other 40% is in play. How much the dropout rate would count toward a school’s API would be determined by the state schools superintendent and board of education, but including that information would give a more realistic measure of performance. A school with high test scores but also a high dropout rate, for example, would see its API dip.

This bill would also assign API responsibility to the school and district of origin for students enrolled in alternative education programs - which is not currently the case. That would remove what Steinberg calls “a perverse incentive” for schools to stand by as the least able students walk out the door.

Another bill in the package, SB 405, would help schools in the lowest third of the API increase the number and quality of college prep and career tech courses they offer. This sounds like common sense, but it is actually a visionary attempt to eradicate the 100-year-old bias in education that allowed career tech to become a second-tier option to college readiness.

The voluntary grant program created by the bill would provide schools with $100 a student. Schools could, for example, add a “shadow” algebra class for struggling students (shadow classes reinforce lessons previously taught in regular class) or Advanced Placement chemistry for those who excel. They could meld career tech and college prep in an “auto physics” class, like the one taught at Duarte High School.

How will this keep kids in school? A report released last year by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that almost half of dropouts say they left school because classes were not challenging and they did not see any real-world, or work-world, applicability to what they were learning. Steinberg’s SB 405 would advance what should be the ultimate goal of education: fully preparing students to perform capably whether they enter college or the work world.

Work brings us to another bill in the package, SB 406. One reason U.S. students often lag behind their international peers, research shows, is that they work outside the home more and study less. California permits 16- and 17-year-olds to work a Dickensian 48 hours a week. Steinberg’s legislation would tie work to school performance. Students with lower than a C+ average and less than 90% attendance could work no more than 20 hours a week; students with a C average or lower and attendance that dips below 80% in the current semester couldn’t work at all. The bill would, however, allow principals to consider extenuating circumstances, such as student and family economic necessity, and grant exemptions.

More policy work remains to be done if the dropout rate is to reverse course, but these bills set the state on the right path. They deserve the support of the Legislature and governor.