Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Critics accuse state, districts of underreporting dropouts

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Sunday, March 25, 2001
Critics accuse state, districts of underreporting dropouts
CCISD's rate in 1999 could be either 2.6% or 11.1
By Jeremy Schwartz
Caller-Times

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Depending on which numbers you use, in 1999 the Corpus Christi Independent School District had a dropout rate of 2.6 percent or 11.1 percent.
   And an independent research firm says 38 percent of Nueces County students don't make it to graduation in four years.
   The question for the public and policy makers has become: Which numbers can we trust?
   "Unless we know where we are, we cannot measure how well we're doing," said Maria Robledo Montecel, executive director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, a San Antonio-based education consulting firm.
   "It's important to the credibility of the numbers that they be clear and understandable."
   A number of researchers accuse school districts and the state education agency of manipulating the numbers to substantially underreport the dropout problem.
   They argue that not only are many students whom the average person might consider a dropout - such as those who leave high school to take the General Educational Development test or who are locked up in jail - not counted in official numbers, but the number used as the official dropout measuring stick is laughably low.
   'It is a real problem'
   Since Texas introduced the Academic Excellence Indicator System in 1990, districts have been graded on their annual dropout rates, or the percentage of students who drop out of school during one school year. Using that number, Texas schools had a dropout rate of 1.6 percent in 1999.
   But most education observers agree that such a figure gives a distorted view of how many students are actually leaving school.
   "What's happening is that lay people are not understanding the issue," said Jay Smink, director of the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University in South Carolina. "They hear these low percentages and they say, 'big deal, it's not a real problem.'
   "But it is a real problem. Kids are ending up on the streets."
   Texas Education Agency officials say the annual dropout rate gives the most realistic picture of the state's dropout dilemma. "It gives the most current view," said TEA spokeswoman De Etta Culbertson. "It's the best rate to go with."
   A different approach
   Montecel, Smink and some local educators say that measuring a single class as they move through high school gives the best representation. That rate, called a longitudinal rate, measures the percentage of students in a given class who drop out, no matter in which grade.
   Whereas the annual rate generally gives numbers below 5 percent, the longitudinal rate is usually in the teens.
   Maria Goodloe, assistant superintendent of instruction school services for CCISD, agrees that numbers which show how many students in a given class graduate in four years gives the most realistic view.
   "If you just (use the annual rate) you don't have the picture," she said.
   Critics also point out that if districts counted students who are incarcerated, who have left to pursue a GED, or who failed the exit level TAAS test as dropouts, then the statistics would be even more realistic.
   The Intercultural Development Research Association estimates that the TEA left 100,000 dropouts uncounted because of its strict definition of who a dropout is.
   Who counts as a dropout?
   The TEA counts as dropouts students who leave school for academic, job-related or family-related reasons, homelessness, or whose whereabouts are unknown. It does not include foreign students who return to their home country, GED students or students who fail the TAAS.
   Education officials argue that GED students shouldn't be classified as dropouts since they are completing their education, albeit on a scaled-down version.
   Critics counter that GED students are not high school graduates and do not reap the same financial benefits as those who hold diplomas. According to the Texas A&M University Department of Rural Sociology, the difference between a GED and a diploma can be as much as $15,000 a year in income for a Texas household.
   Districts have also been criticized for underreporting dropouts. Under the state accountability system, districts are penalized with state intervention if they have a 6 percent dropout rate for any ethnic group.
   New reporting system
   "There's a lot of incentive for districts to underreport," said Walt Haney, a Boston College education professor who has studied the relationship between Texas' accountability system and the dropout rate.
   In 1994, the state auditor estimated that the actual dropout rate was more than double what the TEA reported, and two years later criticized the agency for not having adequate controls to prevent or detect district underreporting.
   In response, the TEA has introduced the leaver reporting system in which districts were directed to account for each student in grades 7-12 who were enrolled the previous year. The agency also made data collection part of the accountability system and penalized schools for faulty reporting. Nine districts were stripped of their exemplary rating because of poor data collection in 2000.
   To discover the number of underreported students, the TEA compares a roster of all students in attendance in grades 7 through 12 with leaver and enrollment records submitted by districts the following fall.
   Hedging the numbers
   According to the TEA, the new controls have worked, reducing the number of underreported students by 68 percent between 1998 and 1999.
   But some school officials, while not admitting that their districts do it, said there is a great temptation to hedge the numbers. According to one official, districts sometimes report a student who has left school as having moved to another state so the student is not counted as a dropout.
   The TEA also is backing recently introduced legislation that would have an independent public accountant audit districts' dropout rates annually. If passed, Senate Bill 646 would add a completion rate along with the annual dropout rate to the accountability system. That number would record the number of ninth-grade students who graduate within four years, a system advocated by education researchers at the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas.
   Both state officials and education critics agree that adding the completion rate would give a fuller, fairer picture of the state's dropout problem.
   "The more information we have to gauge how students are doing," Montecel said, "the closer we get to addressing the problem."

Staff writer Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 886-3779 or by e-mail at schwartzj@caller.com

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