More Than A Numbers Game

From Jon Narcisse

The good news is Iowa has one of the nation's lowest dropout rates. This is according to a national study conducted by Johns Hopkins University on "dropout factory" schools. Out of 347 high schools in Iowa only eight were named in the report. Our state and governor should be celebrating this report.

The bad news is three of Des Moines' traditional high schools made the list. To put this in perspective Sioux City, Waterloo, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Davenport, Marshalltown, West Des Moines, Fort Dodge and Burlington, ten of Iowa's most populated communities, had one school on the list combined. All of rural Iowa, combined, only had one school on the list, also.

Des Moines' five high schools represent 1.4% of all the Iowa's 347 high schools yet 37.5% of our state's "dropout factories" reside in this district. That's shameful. Put another way 60% of our five traditional high schools in the Des Moines district were identified as dropout factories.

At this point I could claim vindication but I won't. This report makes me sad. When I saw the headline and heard who had conducted the study I was hopeful. My hopes soon turned to disappointment, however, after what I've known and proven for years was yet again confirmed by this well respected independent source.

Dr. Sebring and Des Moines District officials attacked the report and defended the failure to accurately and fully inform Des Moines residents and taxpayers of the magnitude of our academic crisis in this district. The data clearly documents less than 50% of the freshman served by this district graduate four years later. Attendance problems in our Des Moines high schools has reached the crisis level.

Priorities

Academic achievement is abysmal. And the School Board continues to ignore these grave concerns.

Recently I had a conversation with a former Des Moines School Board President. He shared a lesson taught to him by the Iowa Association of School Boards. The lesson was foundational: "school districts define their priorities by their agendas."

Prior to being elected to serve on the Des Moines School Board I understood this at a gut level. Now as a member of the Board I fully understand our District's priorities center around land acquisition, land sales, property management and establishing intimate working relationships with Des Moines' power elite. It was the primary motive for moving the Central Administration from the Cassidy building to the Walnut Street location, as stated by Dr. Sebring.

What has also been demonstrated is that our students, their attendance, their academic achievement, their security, their learning environment, even their ability to graduate is not a priority of the leadership of this District, beginning with the Board.

The Real Story

The Johns Hopkins University report should have opened eyes in this community. It should have also been the final blow putting to rest the campaign masking the real academic story in our district. In addition to myself, three other board members have the truth. Connie Boesen received the real data in her packet on January 18, 2005 from Dr. Colette Love. Dick Murphy and Jeanette Woods received it when we met with Dr. Witherspoon just before he left our district. At that meeting he admitted the truth. He blamed it on DMACC but he at least came clean and admitted the data used by the district was not accurate.

That's why it is even more confusing that Dr. Sebring would continue to defend data proven to be flawed and why board members who know the truth stay silent.

I suppose part of the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I know these aren't just numbers. Each number served represents a young person's life in this community. Either the promise will be fulfilled or failure will define that child's existence. Our prisons are populated by our academic failures. Our streets and the ranks of the homeless are swelled by our academic failures. Our drug houses are overflowing with our academic failures. The price tag for public education in Iowa is modest. The cost of the massive academic failure and the refusal to acknowledge it is staggering.

It's About The Kids

I wish the bureaucrats that so betray our youth would go with me into the streets, or to the prisons, or talk to the parents of these "numbers they so easily manipulate." This isn't just about the numbers. I was reminded about that yesterday by the son of one of our legendary champions for kids, Mr. Bill Reichardt.

Doug reminded me that it's not just about the numbers. Each of those failed numbers is a life of promise and opportunity lost. It's not just data. Dr. Sebring's attack on Johns Hopkins University, one of our nation's most well respected, reduced this tragedy of lost children to bureaucratic formula and manuevering.

Doug reminded me that lives are being lost and the price paid by the kids and the rest of society is devastating.

At the last School Board meeting I raised concerns about our failure to address security in our Des Moines School buildings following the Cleveland shooting on our agenda. This was the written response I received from our Board President Dick Murphy:

If you visit the Walnut Street location where our administration resides it is obvious contemporary security is a priority just as it was at the Cassidy building. A citizen simply cannot walk off the street and wander throughout the building. When I was on Mac's World on 98.3 FM a couple of weeks ago we talked about security in our schools. A Dowling parent shared the security measures they took using volunteers after Columbine. A Des Moines School District supplier shared how he enters our schools all the time and is never stopped as he wanders the halls.

School Violence

Meanwhile our Des Moines School District remains the single most violent institution in our community. Earlier this year I spoke to a grandmother whose daughter was attacked at the school by two suspended students who entered school grounds armed - one with a baseball bat and the other with brass knuckles. The mother had warned the school of the prospect of violence but the administration ignored the warnings and an incident took place.

Meanwhile our Des Moines School District remains the single most violent institution in our community. Earlier this year I spoke to a grandmother whose daughter was attacked at the school by two suspended students who entered school grounds armed. One with a baseball bat and the other with brass knuckles. The mother had warned the school of the prospect of violence but the administration ignored the warnings and an incident took place. The student defended herself and now faces expulsion.

I did get Dick Murphy on a conference call with us but he opted out of the conversation so he would be able to, if needed, to participate in an expulsion hearing for the students involved.

Another parent I talked to shortly thereafter expressed concern about school safety and shared with me a story about a stabbing that took place not ten feet from her while she was signing her child up at school.

At yet another area high school I spoke with a teacher who witnessed a mother having to intervene as a group of girls attacked her daughter. Again, the incident was triggered by a suspended student entering school grounds without being stopped.

School Discipline

The teaching and learning environment in too many of our schools is unacceptable. At our listening post at North Library a number of parents and educators gorged me on incident after incident where discipline is lacking, violence is taking place and disruptions are common place. One teacher even took video of a student in continued defiance of teachers.

When I asked why more students aren't held accountable when they demonstrate this completely inappropriate behavior I was informed that the District has capped suspensions and expulsions to get the numbers down.

In recent reports Des Moines, with less than 7% of the state's enrollment has had nearly 20% of the state's suspensions. This reflects the magnitude of the chaos in our buildings and the failure to prescribe a real discipline plan. Of course last month the District released new suspension and expulsion figures which, on the surface would suggest we've improved but not if the method controlling the numbers is a total break down of discipline in the classroom and our schools.

After our first listening post a middle school teacher shared the story of a student who just screamed and screamed to the point of shutting down the class. Eventually the student was removed. A half hour later, however, the student was back in the class and started over again. Literally at our building level, save in the most extreme instances, tools to address disruptive and unacceptable student behaviour has been stripped in order to achieve bureacratic outcomes.

Dropout Factory Article

By NANCY ZUCKERBROD
AP Education Writer

Eight of the state's 347 high schools _ or about 2.3 percent _ have the dubious distinction of being a ``dropout factory'' _ a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That distinction applies to more than one in 10 high schools across America.

``If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?'' asks Bob Balfanz, the researcher at Johns Hopkins University who defines such a school as a ``dropout factory.''

There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, no more than a decade ago but no less, either.

Iowa's dropout factories include Abraham Lincoln High School (Council Bluffs), Thomas Jefferson High School (Council Bluffs), Des Moines East High School, Lincoln High School (Des Moines), North High School (Des Moines), Mason City High School, Southeast Webster High School and Waterloo East High School.

While some of the missing students transferred from these schools, most dropped out, Balfanz says. The data tracked senior classes for three years in a row _ 2004, 2005 and 2006 _ to make sure local events like plant closures weren't to blame for the low retention rates.

The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around, because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones _ the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.

Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages. About half of high schools in those states classify as dropout factories.

``Part of the problem we've had here is we live in a state that culturally and traditionally has not valued a high school education,'' said Jim Foster, a spokesman for South Carolina's Department of Education. He noted that South Carolina residents once could get good jobs in textile mills without a high school degree, but that those jobs are now much harder to come by.

Federal lawmakers haven't focused much attention on the problem. The No Child Left Behind education law, for example, pays much more attention to educating younger students. But that appears to be changing.

House and Senate proposals to renew the five-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve, and the Bush administration supports the idea.

The current law imposes serious consequences on schools that report low scores on math and reading tests, such as having to replace teachers or principals, but it lacks the same kind of teeth when it comes to graduation rates.