On students like those at BCNHS

Note: Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School had a graduation rate higher than those quoted here and nowhere near the budget of South Brooklyn High School WHICH HAS A VAN TO PICK STUDENTS UP. But, godspeed to the future schools who do the important work described in the article below.

From Time magazine
Thursday, May. 03, 2007
Stopping the ExodusBy Claudia Wallis

Kids who quit school don't just suddenly drop out; it's more of a slow fade.Typically it begins in the ninth grade, if not earlier, often when life hitsa particularly nasty patch and racking up credits in class no longer seemsespecially compelling or plausible. Ernestine Maisonet started fading ineighth grade, when the grandmother who had raised her died. "She was a womanwho worked wonders," murmurs Maisonet, who says she doesn't know her motherand isn't close to her dad. After the death, her family of six siblings fellapart. Maisonet has lived sometimes with an aunt, sometimes with aboyfriend, and sometimes she had no place to go. "I was a good student untilmy grandmother passed away," says the 19-year-old redhead from the Bronx.Though she was enrolled in high school, she earned just three credits in twoyears: "I completely shut down. I didn't do good at all."Tanya Garcia, 19, of Brooklyn also went off track at the end of middleschool. A fire destroyed her family's apartment and left them homeless forfour months. She landed in a large, impersonal high school, and quicklybecame disengaged. "I started getting into drugs--weed, drinking, cocaineand heroin." After two years of mostly cutting class, she had accumulated agrand total of one credit. When she tried to transfer to another school,"the dean pretty much laughed in my face," she says. At 16, she stoppedgoing to school. "I didn't see myself having any kind of future. I would getsome job I hated and just survive."Against all odds, Maisonet and Garcia are slated to graduate in New YorkCity's class of 2007. They are among some 13,000 students who dropped out orwere on the verge of doing so but have been recovered in the public schoolsystem. The city's secret? Finding out who was dropping out and why andoffering a variety of paths--complete with intensive social support andpersonalized instruction- -back to school.Nationally about 1 in 3 high school students quits school. Among black andHispanic students, the rate is closer to 50%. For decades, school districtsobscured the hemorrhaging with sleight of hand--using misleading formulas tocalculate graduation rates and not bothering to track the kids who fellthrough the cracks. Getting a more honest accounting became a top priorityfor the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was instrumental inpersuading the Governors of all 50 states to agree in 2005 to startmeasuring graduation rates in a fair and consistent way. Ask Melinda Gatesto name the foundation's top achievement in education so far, and shedoesn't hesitate to answer, "Getting the nation to look at graduation ratesin the right way."In 2005, New York used Gates funding to commission the Parthenon Group, aBoston-based consulting firm, to dig deep into its graduation data. Theresulting 64-page report, released last October, enabled the nation'slargest school district to discern how many kids it was losing, which onesand when. Just as important, it showed what was working to salvage high-riskkids like Maisonet and Garcia.New York asked Parthenon to focus on students who were two or more yearsbehind their peers in accumulating credits toward graduation. "We had ahunch that these overage, undercredited kids were the bulk of the dropouts,"says Leah Hamilton, executive director of the city's Office of MultiplePathways to Graduation. That turned out to be more correct than anyone hadimagined: 93% of dropouts had a history of being overage and undercredited.In fact, once students fell into this category, they had just a 19% chanceof finishing high school or getting a graduate equivalency diploma (GED).The groundbreaking study--which is being emulated in Boston, Chicago andPortland, Ore.--was full of surprises. Among them was the sheer size of NewYork's problem: 70,000 students from 16 to 21--more than one-fifth of thecity's high school population-- were two or more years behind their peers inaccumulating the 44 credits needed for graduation. An additional 68,000 hadalready dropped out. All told, New York's 138,000 lost and vulnerable kidsmade up a population larger than the combined public high school enrollmentof Philadelphia, Houston and Boston.Some of the biggest surprises in the midst of this enormous crisis were thesmall bright spots. The study showed that a number of existing programs wereremarkably effective in propelling dead-end students toward a diploma.Transfer schools--small, personalized high schools specially designed forkids who have fallen seriously behind--had a 56% graduation rate, comparedwith 19% for such high-risk kids at ordinary high schools, and some transferschools were graduating nearly 70%. Another program, Young Adult BoroughCenters (YABCs), which operates in the late afternoon and evening forstudents 17 or older, was enabling about 40% of these last-chance studentsto graduate.New York discovered that its most vulnerable ninth-graders- -the weakreaders--were much more likely to stay on track toward graduation at thecity's newer and smaller high schools than at its large conventional ones."A big aha," says Hamilton, "is that a single strategy was not going towork. You need a portfolio of strategies." In the wake of the report, thecity has examined what the best transfer schools, YABCs and GED programswere doing right and is trying to replicate them citywide.It's easy to spot what's going right at South Brooklyn Community High, thetransfer school that Garcia attends. It's obvious the minute the doors open.Waiting in the bright, airy reception area are six advocate-counselors , orACs. Each counsels 25 or so kids, whom they greet individually, often withelaborate, personalized handshakes or fist pounds. These close relationshipsare cemented by daily meetings and twice-weekly group sessions. When any ofthe school's 150 students fail to show up in the morning, the AC makes aphone call to find out why. Freddie Perez, 17, compares this with thecheck-in procedure at the big high school he used to attend: "I'd swipe myID at the beginning of school and then go back out the door," he says.The ACs are not school-district employees; they work for a nonprofitorganization called Good Shepherd Services. Every New York transfer schooland YABC is paired with a community-based organization that focuses on thesocial, emotional and family issues that tend to weigh down these students."We don't have the expertise for these complex challenges," explains schoolschancellor Joel Klein, who heads the New York City Department of Education.The academic staff is also enthusiastic about the partnership. "Teachers canfocus on the best way to educate students," says South Brooklyn's principal,Vanda Belusic-Vollor. "That's huge!"Classes at South Brooklyn have 18 to 25 students, as opposed to as many as34 in the city's large high schools. Students call their teachers by theirfirst name. Because the school runs on a trimester system, kids can rack upcredits more quickly than they could at an ordinary high school--part of theplan to keep them moving briskly toward graduation day. The teachers favor ahands-on approach; there's very little chalk and talk. Perez says he used tohate U.S. history. "In my old school, they'd just give you a page number andtell you to answer questions in the text." At South Brooklyn, he says,"we'll study a court case for a week, and the second week, we act it out.When it's test time, you remember it."Students are pushed toward New York State's demanding Regents diploma, whichmeans passing seven exams, and toward higher education. They mustparticipate in the city's Learning to Work program, which teaches employmentskills, provides college and career counseling, and offers subsidizedinternships. While not everyone loves his or her internship, Garcia was soinspired by her stint at a youth newspaper that she now hopes to studyjournalism in college.Most of the same elements are at work at the YABC in Lehmann High School inthe Bronx, where Maisonet spends her evenings. There are small classes ledby dynamic teachers, a Learning to Work program and close relationships withcounselors from a health and social-services group. The atmosphere here is abit more no-nonsense. The 250 students are all over 17, and many haveweighty daytime responsibilities. "They have kids at home. Some arepregnant. Some are homeless," says assistant principal Martin Smallhorne, anenergetic young administrator who works hard to create a personalizedprogram inside one of the city's larger and less intimate high schools.The clock is ticking for his 310 students. The goal: get them to graduationbefore they hit 21 and age out of the system. YABCS stress efficientscheduling. To attend, students must have spent at least four years in highschool and have accumulated at least 17 credits. "Their transcripts tend tobe a mess," says Michele Cahill, who helped create the Multiple Pathwaysprogram and is now at the Carnegie Corporation. Students might be missingthe second half of algebra and three years of phys ed. "Ordinary highschools are not set up to deal with these kinds of gaps," says Cahill, but agood YABC can sometimes get the job done in a year. New data show that aboutone-quarter of students at YABCS and transfer schools go on to college.Klein plans to greatly expand the number of transfer schools and YABCS overthe remaining 2 1/2 years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration.Replicating successful programs is always tricky, but in this case there's apeculiar obstacle. Under state- and federal-accountabil ity rules, schoolsfull of students who don't graduate on time are labeled failing. By thatdefinition, YABCS and transfer schools fail no matter how brilliant a jobthey are doing. "It's hard to get partners to invest and hard to attractstrong leaders when the school is labeled failing," says Hamilton.New York will also have to stem the tide of students who fall behind in thefirst place. Ninth grade is a major pitfall. Parthenon found that 78% ofkids who become overage and undercredited had to repeat freshman year. Onekey is improving reading skills in middle school--a challenge nationally.Last year 37% of the city's eighth-graders were proficient in reading, upfrom 30% in 2002 but still a long way from ideal. Another key, Kleinbelieves, is continuing to replace big, impersonal high schools with smallerschools that offer a sense of community and a variety of programs. SaysKlein: "You want to create a really robust set of options."Providing more choices is paying dividends for New York. In the past threeyears, the city has raised its on-time graduation rate from 44% to 50%,though how states measure such figures continues to spur debate. Five- andsix-year graduation rates are also up. "We think it's powerfully importantto increase all these rates," says Klein. "It may take a kid a couple ofyears longer, but if the kid gets the diploma, the economic consequences arehuge."Maisonet is thinking about a job in veterinary care and possibly college,but without all the support she has had at the YABC, it won't be easy tomove on. When Maisonet suffered a late miscarriage in March, Smallhorne senttwo outreach staff members to find her, and she was back in school two weekslater. "I love YABC," she says. "The teachers say, Come on, you have tograduate--we don't want you here no more. But I'm going to cry when Ileave."