Southern Education Foundation

Group wants Fewer Dropouts
Dana Beyerle
July 22, 2009

MONTGOMERY — Alabama’s high school dropout rate of about 40 percent is a statistic, but one student dropping out of school is a personal and societal tragedy, a commission addressing high school graduation and student dropouts learned Wednesday.

"If we have one kid that leaves (school), that’s one too many," said committee member Kay Warfield, prevention and support services director for the state Department of Education.

Students leaving school before graduating is Alabama’s No. 1 education and economic problem, according to the Southern Education Foundation.

"This may be the greatest problem facing our state, the lack of education," agreed retired Morgan County District Judge David Breland, a judicial system appointee to the commission.

To address dropouts, a 14-member Alabama Select Commission on High School Graduation and Student Dropouts was created in the 2009 legislative session by a resolution sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur.

His resolution accompanied a 2009 state law that requires the state education department to work with school systems to lower the dropout rate and requires those that do not to report why.

The law changed the school compulsory attendance age from 16 to 17, but it allows student withdrawal with written parental consent and participation in an exit interview.

The bill requires the state to work with school systems and report the outcome of dropout prevention strategies. It requires the state school superintendent, the two-year college system chancellor and the Alabama Commission on Higher Education to develop a fast-track college plan designed to keep potential dropouts motivated.

"Our end result is to address the dropout rate in the state of Alabama and partner with the state department of education and other entities that are working with it to come up with viable solutions hopefully to reduce the rate," Orr said.

The commission is to report findings by Dec. 31.

School systems have begun standardized programs to address dropout rates.

They include PASS (Preparing All Students for Success) grants that include reading and technology, mentoring, transitional and after-school programs and credit recovery where students can retake only the part of a course they have trouble with instead of the entire course.

The Southern Education Foundation said Alabama in 2006 had a 39 percent dropout rate.

SEF program officer Lauren Veasey said one problem in comparing dropout rates across states is lack of a uniform definition of a dropout.

Generally a dropout is a student who starts the ninth grade, but doesn’t finish high school within four years. But as commission member DuWayne Bridges, a state legislator from Valley, said, he was a "dropout" who later got bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Commission member Jeremiah Newell of the Mobile Education Foundation said there’s an economic cost to dropping out. He said the average wage of a dropout is about $19,000 a year, just less than the poverty rate of about $21,000 for a family of four.

"The (non) graduation rate and the poverty rate are the same thing," Newell said..