Sherman Dorn's thoughts on the proposed new NCLB regulations regarding the calculation of graduation rates are worth noting. I fully agree with this statement: "I will need to read the proposed regulatory changes in NCLB more carefully when I have the chance..."
That's exactly what I'm hoping to do.....
No, wait....I'm hoping other intelligent people beat me to it!
I attended this session and I've been meaning to post about it, but then I saw that Eduwonkette was going to do that, so I waited. Her post accurately summarizes the session; in addition, several others who attended the session posted comments. Click the title link to read about the session.
Rep. Rebecca Hamilton (D-OKC) has authored a bill that would limit the hours students under the age of 18 may work. Currently, the law only limits the hours that children under the age of 16 may work. They would not be able to work more than 18 hours per week (unless they maintained a 3.5 GPA). They would not be able to work later than 10pm on school nights (even if they attended a night school?)
According to our annual student survey, approximately 40% of the high-school students in Oklahoma's alternative education programs need to work to help support their families.
Should we be concerned that this bill would increase the number of dropouts? Let us know!
The January American School Board Journal included a small news item that warrants attention, so we're posting it here:
"Do high school exit exams provide an accurate measure of student performance? Or do they push students who are on the academic bubble to drop out before getting a diploma?
In California, the answer appears to be the latter, according to a report presented to the state Board of Education in November. The analysis found that 2006 graduation rates fell by 4 percent, and 10,000 more seniors dropped out than four years earlier."
We're mostly on winter break here (and actually having some snow instead of ice), but we thought we'd point people to this article on alternative education in Oklahoma.
If you went to the student conference and want to hear a reprise of some of Monte Selby's presentation, Wes Fryer(Speed of Creativity)posted a podcast. I enjoy just hearing how he had the kids participating.
If you missed the conference, you can listen to a bit of what you missed, and be glad that we think we have booked Monte for next year.
To hear the podcast, click the link and then scan down the page and you'll see the audio player.
Oklahoma's alternative education programs served as many girls as boys last year. If you want to know why that might be important, read this post from Jean Warner's Oklahoma Women's Network blog:
An alarmingly high number of girls are dropping out of high school and these female dropouts are at particular economic risk compared to their male counterparts, according to a report by the National Women’s Law Center.
Released November 2, 2007, When Girls Don’t Graduate, We All Fail: A Call to Improve High School Graduation Rates for Girls, finds that American girls are dropping out of high school at nearly the same rate as boys, and at even greater economic cost. Female dropouts earn significantly lower wages than male dropouts, are at greater risk of unemployment, and are more likely to rely on public support programs.
When Girls Don’t Graduate finds that close to half of the estimated dropouts from the Class of 2007 were female students, or over 520,000 of the overall 1.2 million high school dropouts. Overall, an estimated one in four female students will not graduate with a regular high school diploma in the standard, four-year time period.
The rates are even worse for girls of color. Nationwide, 37 percent of Hispanic, 40 percent of Black, and 50 percent of American Indian or Alaskan Native female students respectively failed to graduate in four years in 2004. While girls in each racial and ethnic group fare better than their male peers of the same race or ethnicity, Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native female students graduate at significantly lower rates than White and Asian-American males.
Read the report When Girls Don’t Graduate
and the National Women’s Law Center's press release.
From Education Week Online (Click the title link above to read the full article):
Facing unrelenting pressure to raise anemic high school graduation rates, education leaders in Los Angeles are turning to YouTube, MySpace, text messaging, and the radio waves to reach students at risk of dropping out of school and lure back thousands who have already left.
The Los Angeles Unified School District—the nation’s second largest, with 708,000 students—is believed to be one of the first districts to use social-networking Web sites and text-messaging communications as a vital part of a dropout-reduction strategy.
Students who abandoned the city’s high schools and have come back to finish their diplomas will be the primary messengers to their at-risk peers in the new campaign, said Debra Duardo, the director of Los Angeles Unified’s dropout-prevention and -recovery program. They will post video testimonials on YouTube and build groups on popular MySpace message boards to spread the word about their own experiences and the alternatives for earning a diploma, which don’t necessarily require a return to one of the district’s giant four-year high schools.
The PEN NewsBlast posted this summary of an article in the San Antonio Express News. It's not news; people in alternative education knew this would be a problem when we first read the NCLB Act. But it's good that the mainstream media is starting to pay attention.
This year, the Tejada Academy, the last stop for troubled kids in the Harlandale (Texas) Independent School District, posted the biggest percentage gain in the county on Texas’ state tests, reports Jenny Lacoste-Caputo of the San Antonio Express-News. This should be cause for joy, but unfortunately, the school failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) for the third consecutive year, which could trigger serious No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sanctions and even possible closure.
The federal law requires 70 percent of seniors to earn a diploma, which isn’t a tough goal for many Texas schools. However, Tejada is special in that it is designed specifically for students who are way behind in their credits -- the school doesn’t even accept students who can graduate in four years. Also, Tejada students face atypical challenges as some have children, some are significant sources of family income, others are taking care of siblings because parents are in jail, and still others are homeless.
Even with the great work the school is doing, the federal law has not made any special provisions for similar alternative schools. Eventually, if the school continues to miss AYP, the Harlandale school district will consider rejecting federal Title I money, as schools that do not accept these funds are not subject to NCLB sanctions. As a Tejada English teacher said "I find no humor or irony in the fact that NCLB has overlooked alternative schools...it’s a pathetic oversight."
Check out this link to the Tulsa World. Front page, above the fold, great story on Union's alt ed program expansion (to include middle school students). What a nice way to start the week.
We've noted for a long time that real alternative education works a lot better than programs that call themselves "alternative education" but are really disciplinary placements. In most alternative discipline programs, students are "sentenced" to an alternative program.
Back in the late 90s, before the Statewide Alternative Education program was initiated, we had some opportunities to compare the two types of treatments and found that students improved when in true alternative education programs; the reverse was true when the programs were disciplinary placements.
More evidence was published this week. See the article, Disciplinary Policy in Texas Raises Concerns.
Here are a few paragraphs from the article; I've highlighted the most disturbing statistics:
Malique is one of more than 100,000 Texas schoolchildren removed from their regular schools each year and sent to "discipline alternative-education placement," or DAEP.
The practice isn't unusual: In school systems across the country, students who act out are sent to special "alternative" schools. Administrators say it's the best way to keep schools safe, and in fact, state laws in Texas and elsewhere mandate that students be suspended for weapons or drug offense.
But most of the students removed from Texas classrooms have committed relatively minor, nonviolent offenses, says Rebecca Lightsey of Texas Appleseed, an Austin-based advocacy group. For many, this marks the beginning of the end of school.
Lightsey's group conducted a study on the effects of Texas' "zero tolerance" approach to discipline in schools. It found that students sent to alternative schools are five times more likely to drop out — and they're more likely to end up in prison.
David Hoff (Education Week online) has an interesting article on the Graduation Promise Act and its connection to the reauthorization of NCLB. Here are the first few paragraphs, but I recommend reading the entire article if you want some updated info on NCLB reauthorization.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a plan last week to turn around U.S. high schools with the worst dropout problems.
In the most comprehensive congressional proposal addressing high school improvement introduced this year, five members of the Senate education committee are sponsoring a bill that would authorize $2.4 billion a year to provide grants to high schools with the highest dropout rates and support proven methods to increase their graduation rates and help middle schools identify students at risk of not completing high school.
Half of the nation’s dropouts attend 15 percent of its high schools, one researcher told the Senate education committee, pointing out that the problem can be addressed with a targeted grant program reaching about 2,000 schools.
The Alliance for Excellent Education has posted an Issue Brief summarizing recent research on the cost of dropping out, focusing on the cost to individuals, society, and government. They figure costs using graduation rates rather than dropout rates, so their figures will be higher than those you may have seen in other places.
The Alliance recently held a symposium on Capitol Hill entitled, What's Working in High School Reform? Video from this event will be posted sometime this week on the Alliance website.
