”
1 in 4 Students Drop Out in Gilroy
”
read the headline of July 18th’s Dispatch. The article went on
to bemoan the fact that Gilroy’s derived four-year dropout rate was
26.7 percent, compared to rates of 14.5, 20.2, and 24.2 for Morgan
Hill, Santa Clara County, and California, respectively.
“1 in 4 Students Drop Out in Gilroy” read the headline of July 18th’s Dispatch. The article went on to bemoan the fact that Gilroy’s derived four-year dropout rate was 26.7 percent, compared to rates of 14.5, 20.2, and 24.2 for Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County, and California, respectively.
Curious, I visited the California Department of Education’s Web site, delved into the Data Quest function, and located the dropout data. As mentioned in the article, we have only been gathering data on this for one year; the four-year rates cited above are derived by simply multiplying one year rates by 4.
See the accompanying chart for some pertinent information.
Notice that we are doing practically as well as Morgan Hill in retaining our Hispanic students. It is just that we have more Hispanic students, so their retention rate swamps the retention rate of our white students. The opposite is true in Morgan Hill. We are doing better than LA and Santa Clara County as a whole in retaining our Hispanic students. We are doing worse than most in retaining our white students. And, like the rest of California, we are doing much better at graduating white (and Asian) students than at graduating Hispanic (and black) students.
The LA Times recently addressed a taboo subject in an in-depth interview of eight students, half Asian, half Hispanic, all of similar socioeconomic and immigration backgrounds: Why do Asian students get better grades than Hispanic students? (The complete story can be viewed at www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lincoln16-2008jul16,0,3712530.story.)
The conclusion was basically: culture. Asian parents expect all As; a B prompts a search for a tutor. Hispanic parents have lower expectations for academics, but do expect their children to get jobs and help the family. For example: “Let’s say a Latino student is studying and an Asian student is studying,” Martinez said. “The Latino parent will often say, ‘Hey, come help me out real quick, then you can go back to your studying.’ Where the Asian parent will say, ‘Oh, you’re doing your homework. OK, you finish, and then after you’re done, you come help me.’ ”
It is difficult for a school district to overcome cultural expectations – or lack thereof. But the school officials in the LA Times story above were chagrined to discover that they had been inadvertently discriminating between their Asian and Hispanic students. Hispanic students were invariably asked for their hall passes. Asian students never were. Difficult, but not impossible. KIPP accomplishes it. The 66 Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools nationwide are all showing consistent test score gains. Since 2001, students who were with KIPP for four years jumped from the 40th to the 82nd percentile in math and from the 32nd to the 60th percentile in reading on national tests.
KIPP works mainly with poor, Latino children. KIPP works by requiring vast amounts of time on task and providing a support network. Class starts at 7:30 am and ends at 5 pm. A lot of homework is assigned. Privileges are lost for not completing it. The school year starts three weeks early. Saturday school is required. But if your father misses your birthday because he is in prison, your classmates sympathize. Some of their fathers are in prison also.
KIPP is not necessary for the child of college educated parents, where the home is conducive to learning. But the KIPP success stories clearly demonstrate that just because a student is poor, Hispanic, and LEP, he is not fated to be a dropout.
One comment by Gilroy Unified School District Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Basha Millhollen raised my hackles. She said that students who cannot pass the California High School Exit Exam tend to drop out. Folks, the CAHSEE tests reading comprehension at about a sixth grade level and math at an eighth grade level. If a student can’t pass the CAHSEE by grade 12, and we give him a diploma anyway, what does that diploma mean? Absolutely nothing.
