Bringing back dropouts -- one at a time

He’d taken the test half a dozen times and always come up short, vowing each time to try again. But after missing the mark for about the eighth time, this bright student from Central Mexico -- who had completed all his courses, struggled to read Shakespeare while learning English, and even received a “Certificate of Completion” during graduation ceremonies -- decided he’d had enough.

When Juliette Gros­claude, a dropout prevention specialist for the Johnston County Public Schools, found Eduardo last spring, he was working in the fields, like so many others in his family. She convinced him to try again.

“I could bet my life that he wasn’t going to come back to take it, but he did!” says Grosclaude, one of eight “student advocates” for the district, located southeast of Raleigh. “He had literally dropped out, and we were able to bring him back.”

The success of Eduardo, who is now enrolled in community college, did not come about by chance but through the well-planned efforts of a growing district that decided three years ago to focus attention on its graduation and dropout rates. Johnston County is one of many smaller districts using innovative ways to keep students in school.

When North Carolina released its graduation rate data earlier this month, the report showed that 75 percent of Johnston County’s 2,002 ninth-graders graduated in 2006 -- hardly a stellar statistic and well below the 90.2 percent rate of the state’s top-performing district, Chapel Hill-Carrboro.

But in a growing 30,000-student district where the migrant population is burgeoning and nearly one-third of the students qualify for free and reduced-priced lunches, Johnston County has beat the state graduation rate of 68 percent and is committed to improving the outcome for all its students.

The district is approaching the dropout problem on many fronts. It has set up ninth-grade transition programs in its six high schools and last year opened a middle college program at Johnston Community College for students who can do college-level work but have trouble adjusting to a traditional high school.

Grosclaude is one of two student advocates working specifically with migrant and ESL students in a program funded by the federal government. In addition, the district has used local funds to put student advocates in all its high schools and is planning to expand the program to middle schools, as well.

The advocates work with high school counselors, teachers, students, and families, doing “whatever it takes to shepherd students through graduation,” says Oliver Johnson, director of student services.

“I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done in trying to keep kids in school,” says school board Chair Fred Bartholomew, a former high school principal.

The student advocates focus exclusively on potential dropouts. They get to know these students as early as the spring semester of eighth grade, making visits to feeder schools for the high schools. By the time the students transition to high school, the dropout specialists have already gotten to know them and are well on their way to becoming their “advocates.”

When a teacher discusses an assignment requiring a computer, a high school student will not say, “‘I don’t have computer. I don’t have a desk. I don’t even have a bed,’” Oliver says. “They just fail.”

But it is easier to share that kind of information with one of the student advocates. As a result, says Marlon Lee, a student advocate at Clayton High School, “I am able to get to know the kids on a different level.”

Recently, Lee checked up on an 11th-grader who was sleeping through his first-period math class. He looked into the boy’s living situation and found he was working the late shift at McDonald’s to help support his family. After he persuaded the boy to cut back his hours, Lee says, “he’s doing fine.”

Working a low-level job to support one’s family is not uncommon in this growing county. At 14 percent of the student population, Hispanics are among the fastest growing groups in Johnston County, and the district enrolls about 400 students from migrant families, Grosclaude says. Some parents do seasonal work in the fields and move their families from state to state. Others work with North Carolina cotton or tobacco crops during the growing season and find other jobs locally during the winter months.

Eduardo’s family came from the Mexican state of Zacatecas, and he speaks a Native American dialect. He’s learning Spanish while also learning English, Grosclaude says. Despite the language difficulties, Eduardo persevered in high school, aided by Grosclaude, his school counselor, and a sympathetic 12th-grade English teacher, who agreed to modify the course to accommodate an English-language learner.

Of course, attending a U.S. high school is a big adjustment for students like Eduardo. In Mexico, students do not choose their courses but just take the curriculum that is offered. Helping parents understand this difference -- as well as this country’s compulsory education laws -- are all part of Grosclaude’s job.

“That’s one of our main goals: to increase parent involvement and to educate the parents because there’s so much we take for granted -- that we know and they don’t -- because the society is different,” Grosclaude says.

Of course, there are also family issues among U.S.-born students that educators need to take into account. In rural Oelwein, Iowa, for example, some parents prefer their children to work on the family farm when they grow up, rather than attend college, says Barb Schmitz, a counselor at Wings Park Elementary School.

Wings Park recently completed three years of a family-based dropout prevention program developed at the University of Wisconsin called FAST (Families and Schools Together) that offers intensive parent training and family support. She hopes to find funds to resume the program soon.

Families are experiencing a tremendous amount of stress, brought on by economic pressures and long work hours, Schmitz says. “I think we have a lot of X-Boxes, Game Boys, and Nintendos that are really taking care of children now. I don’t think parents want it that way. I think parents do what they have to do to survive.”

In Fitchburg, Mass., a former textile mill town on the Nashua River, economic hardship and parental stress are also well known to local educators. Fifty-one percent of the students at Fitchburg High School receive free and reduced-price lunches, and much of the student population is transient.

The high school may start and end the year with 1,400 students, says Principal Richard Masciarelli, “but we will have served well over 1,700 students before the year is out.”

The school takes advantage of grant programs and foundations to help fund its Step Up to Excellence Program for high-performing, low-income students, and its Student Success Center, a room with 20 computers near the counseling office where teachers and older students tutor struggling students.

“We found out long ago, we can’t do it on our own,” Masciarelli says. “We need collaboration.”

The McCracken County Public Schools on the outskirts of another river town, Paducah, Ky., has set up what it calls Open Campus for seniors who are within a few credits of completing their coursework but need a final push to graduate.

The state of Kentucky mandates 22 credits for graduation, but two of the three McCracken County high schools require 25 because they are on block schedules. That can be tough for seniors who have accumulated only 17 credits or so. If they transfer to the Open Campus, they’ll need just 22, but that doesn’t mean they can slack off, says Charles Courtney, director of pupil personnel.

Space at the computer-driven program is limited, Courtney said. If he sees students who aren’t making the most of their time, he will tell them that they either have to work harder or “I need your chair.”

“After having a talk like that, I’ve never had one drop out,” Courtney says.

The reward comes at graduation, which is especially meaningful for some of the Open Campus students and their families. “The emotion of the parents is really something to witness,” Courtney says. “For many of these families, this student might be the first one out of the whole extended family to receive a high school diploma.”