More doubt in dropout figures

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 | 7:35 a.m.

New information is bolstering a growing belief that the Clark County School District dropout rate for 2005 is not as high as the reported 6.8 percent, which is among the nation's worst.

The district said last week that a review of high school dropouts during the 2004-05 school year found that more than two-thirds of the students could no longer be found living in the district. Those figures broadly suggested that many of the students had moved with their families from Southern Nevada.

If that finding were true, then far fewer students were quitting school for reasons typically associated with dropouts, including falling behind in classes or taking jobs.

But district administrators could not be certain. They wondered how students could just disappear. If they enrolled elsewhere, district officials asked, why couldn't they be traced through their transcripts - if indeed their new districts had asked for those records.

The answer, the district confirmed this week, is that transcripts were not sought for most of those students. Furthermore, many large school districts do not ask for those records.

Student enrollment requirements vary from district to district and from state to state. However, many districts - including Clark County; Los Angeles; Broward County, Fla.; and New York - initially ask only for proof of a student's age, current address and immunization records.

After the student has enrolled, the new school district typically requests the student's records from the former district, based on information supplied by the family.

In some cases, families are apparently moving on without requesting the children's records follow them, said Joyce Haldeman, executive director of community and government relations for the Clark County School District.

Whether a student is able to enroll at a new school without requesting their records depends on a variety of factors, including how flexible the new district's rules are and how long the student was in Clark County.

"If they had a limited experience or a very bad experience in Clark County, they may want to try and leave that behind them," Haldeman said. "If they were here for three years, then no - they couldn't. If they were here for three months, then yes, they probably could."

When new students arrive in Clark County, "we enroll them and then we take a look at their transcripts," Haldeman said. "We don't say, 'I see a six-month gap here, where were you?' "

For the past four months, the district has attempted to learn more about its dropout rate by trying to locate more than 4,000 high school students who attended classes during the 2004-05 academic year but did not return to school in August. More than 2,700 student files contained home telephone numbers that had been disconnected and invalid emergency contact information.

Some of the numbers were traced to short-term housing such as the Budget Suites.

While district officials agree that at least some of those students have probably dropped out of school entirely, they also believe families are putting their children in schools in other cities, states and even countries without bothering to collect their local records.

Retired guidance counselors will continue conducting the surveys this spring and the dropout report will be updated accordingly, said Karlene McCormick-Lee, associate superintendent of research and accountability for the district. The process is helping the district improve its own record-keeping system, McCormick-Lee said.

Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV, praised the school district for attempting to collect additional dropout data and for acknowledging that the surface has barely been scratched.

"At least this is a beginning," Schwer said. "We have some new information but it needs to go further."

The district might next want to survey students who are currently attending school and determine how many of their files contain outdated contact information, Schwer said.

"That would be getting at the question of the quality of the database," Schwer said.

Washoe County, the state's second-largest school district with 62,000 students, has also been searching for answers to its dropout problem. Washoe's dropout rate has dipped sharply in the past six years, to 1.8 percent, from 7.3 percent in 1999, district spokesman Steve Mulvenon said.

The decline is attributed largely to an initiative launched about three years ago focusing on the district's minority community. The district added new staff positions for "graduation specialists," who make contact with students and their parents beginning at the middle school level, Mulvenon said.

"We start with the kids who are demonstrating problems with academic progress, getting credits, truancy," Mulvenon said. "And then we try to steer them back on track."

The district also has an intensive freshman orientation program, Mulvenon said.

"We think of the typical eighth grader as young and immature," Mulvenon said. "Sixty days later they're high school freshmen. Is it reasonable to assume they've suddenly gained all the maturity and experience to function competently at a comprehensive high school?"

Lauren Kohut-Rost, acting chief academic officer of the Clark County School District, said the survey results will be used to develop a profile of students at risk of dropping out, potentially helping teachers and administrators catch them before they drop off the radar.

Of the students in grades 9-11 who are listed as dropouts, about 80 percent attended classes through the end of the 2004-05 academic year.

"We're losing them over the summer, they're just not coming back to us," Kohut-Rost said. "We need to come up with a way to let them know they matter and we want to know where they're going."