Northwest educators discuss dropout rates
SEATTLE – High school educators have been told that dropout rates for minority students, especially Native Americans, are at crisis levels in six states.
“Our success rate with Native children starts in kindergarten, or in preschool,” said Sally Brownfield, the facilitator for the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning in Washington.
The high school educators from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Wyoming met Friday at the University of Washington for a one-day conference.
A panel of experts told the educators that after years of talking about how students need to be properly prepared for school, it’s time for schools to start preparing for students.
Brownfield said that’s when Native American children first come in contact with “foreign” cultures.
The panelists, made up in part of representatives of the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, advocated that resources be redirected to help troubled students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The Civil Rights Project conference, a national effort by UCLA, catered to educators serving Native Amerian and Alaska Native students in the six states.
Some districts err on the side of optimism, failing to report missing students as dropouts.
“The statistics school districts turn in aren’t checked,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the project.
Poverty seems to correlate with graduation rates, according to data presented at the conference. High schools serving low-income areas have much lower “promoting power,” which compares the number of freshman and seniors in a given class.
In Washington, schools with 60 percent or fewer seniors, 22 percent of students are Native American, 30 percent black, 29 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Asian and 13 percent white, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
A Johns Hopkins report presented at the conference identified common reasons students drop out:
•Life events such as pregnancies, arrests or a pressing need for a full-time income;
•Frustration or boredom with curriculum that leads them to lose sight of the “reason for coming to school”;
•Subtle encouragement or discouragement from teachers or school administrators who label a student “difficult, dangerous or detrimental to the success of the school”;
•Repeated failure to succeed.