St. Louis CofCC Blog

AP:

WASHINGTON - It’s a nickname no principal could be proud of: “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 description fits 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 Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term “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, about the same level as a decade ago.

While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren’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.

If reducing the dropout rate and ensuring that everyone has a high school diploma is the only thing that matters, then the solution is easy — in schools designated as “dropout factories,” give every young man and woman a high school diploma as a privilege of reaching his or her 17th or 18th birthday.

“What? This would dilute the value of a high school diploma?” Where have you been? I guess you’ve been sleeping under a rock while standards and curricula have been diluted for several decades.

UPDATE 10/30:  Here are the “dropout factories” in the St. Louis Metro Area.  Of these high schools, only Bayless and Northwest (Jefferson Co.) are majority white.

Bayless (St. Louis County, Bayless S.D.)
McCluer (St. Louis County, Ferguson-Florissant S.D.)
Normandy (St. Louis County, Normandy S.D.)
Northwest (Jefferson Co., Northwest S.D.)
Beaumont (SLPS)
Central VPA (SLPS)
Cleveland NJROTC (SLPS)
Gateway (SLPS)
Roosevelt (SLPS)
Soldan (SLPS)

Normandy was once the most desirable school district in north St. Louis County.  Gateway in St. Louis City is considered the second most desirable high school in the city system.