Dropout Factories

Are American high schools laboratories of learning or “dropout factories”? New data out this week from the Associated Press indicate a disturbing 12 percent of high schools nationwide deserve the “factory” moniker. These schools are prolific producers, but not in a good way, churning out dropouts almost as fast as graduates.

Johns Hopkins researcher Bob Balfanz is the man behind the sound bite, defining a “dropout factory” as a high school in which no more than 60 percent of students who begin as freshmen don a cap and gown as graduates.

In North Carolina, 23 percent of public high schools are dropout mills. Such rampant high school failure has far-reaching implications for our state’s economy and the personal lives of students. According to The High Cost of Low Graduation Rates in North Carolina (.pdf), a study released jointly last week by the Friedman Foundation and Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC), high school dropouts cost the state $169 million each year.

Friedman Senior Fellow and report author Brian Gottlob details the dreary life prospects of high school dropouts: they are twice as likely to be unemployed as high school graduates, earn significantly less per year, are more likely to receive Medicaid benefits, and run a greater chance of being incarcerated.

All of this adds up to a hefty tab for taxpayers. According to the PEFNC/Friedman report, each year, dropouts increase state Medicaid costs by roughly $155 million, reduce tax revenue by $712 million, and tack on additional incarceration costs of $6 million. And while per-pupil funding (excluding federal and local dollars) adds up to around $4,877 per year, each dropout costs North Carolina $4,437 annually. Because of this, Gottlob notes, “the state is spending about as much on dropouts each year after they leave school as it spent when they were in school.”

Fortunately, at the state and national levels, lawmakers are grappling with the problem. But prescriptions for reform vary widely. Our state General Assembly has formed two committees to tackle the dropout issue. State Senator Vernon Malone, a co-chairman of the joint legislative committee, is advocating more money, admonishing, “We’re not going to solve the problem on the cheap.” Lawmakers might want to think twice before dipping deeply into education coffers, however: state public school
funding for 2006-07 totaled $7.37
billion (.pdf) – a 114 percent increase since 1992-93, and clearly not “cheap” by anyone’s standards.

Other proposals under consideration would raise the compulsory attendance age. But research finds forcing kids to stay in school longer has no significant effect on dropout rates, nor does it deal with student boredom and disengagement, key factors in the decision to leave school early.

Nationally, House and Senate proposals to reauthorize No Child Left Behind would increase school accountability for graduation performance. Other legislation would push for greater accuracy in dropout reporting and require disaggregating rates based on ethnic subgroups.

Collecting better data is a step in the right direction, as is enhanced accountability. But our broken system merits a more comprehensive overhaul in the form of school choice – allowing students to use public funds to attend a school of their choosing. That’s the solution proposed by PEFNC and the Friedman Foundation: by their estimates, even a modest school-choice program in North Carolina would reduce the number of dropouts by up to 5,483 students each year, saving close to $24 million annually.

Choice won’t solve our dropout crisis single-handedly, but it’s a big step in the right direction. Across the nation, students are leaving public high schools in droves. Trapped in dull and deadening dropout factories, they are desperate for a way out. Not only does choice give these kids an escape hatch (while keeping them in school), research (.pdf) finds it also benefits the public system.

When it comes to producing high school graduates, our one-size-fits-all, assembly-line approach to education clearly isn’t working. Isn’t it time we tried something new?

Kristen Blair wrote this special report for the North Carolina Education Alliance where she is a fellow.