Funding Alert

Recently, New Jersey’s graduation rates were trumpeted in the press as the highest in the nation – 84%. Amidst a steady flow of negative publicity about public schools and the budget crisis, this announcement of good news was as welcome as a cool breeze on a hot summer day.

Unfortunately, the story is more complicated that it first appears and the news is not all good. Many researchers take issue with how graduation rates are calculated on a national and state basis. It is not as simple as measuring the percentage of students who walk down the aisle against the number of students who entered ninth grade four years earlier. When a student disappears from the school rolls, did he drop out? Transfer to another school within the district? Enter a charter school? Move with his parents to a new state?

New Jersey, unlike many other states, doesn’t keep a statewide data base of the progress of individual students so accurate graduation statistics are not really possible. And however New Jersey graduation rates are measured, one thing is certain: success is not distributed evenly across New Jersey communities.

While statewide graduation rates in New Jersey are reported to be above 80%, graduation rates in the urban Abbott districts are closer to the 50 to 60% range. Moreover, substantial numbers of Abbott students don’t even make it through middle school into high school. We are losing thousands of young people to the streets, the unemployment lines, and the prisons.

This educational crisis has high social and economic costs for all of us:

High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested in their lifetimes.

The death rate for dropouts is 2.5 times higher than for high school grads.

Adults without high school diplomas are at greater risk of being unemployed or on public assistance.

Over a lifetime, an 18-year-old who does not complete high school earns about $260,000 less than an individual with a high school diploma, and contributes about $60,000 less in federal and state income taxes.

Want to balance the state budget? Want to improve NJ finances so pensions are paid and property taxes are reduced? One sure remedy is to slash the high school dropout rate and send urban students of color to college.

New Jersey in particular could be facing a serious crisis in this regard in the next few years. As noted above, graduation rates for Abbott districts are much lower than in New Jersey’s suburban districts. Moreover, about 40% of Abbott district graduates currently get their diplomas through the Special Review Assessment (SRA), an alternative route to graduation for students who fail the High School Proficiency Assessment. In 2002, 9500 New Jersey students graduated by SRA. But the State Board of Education has declared it will phase out the SRA over the next 4 to 5 years citing concerns about its reliability and rigor.

At the same time that the SRA is being phased out, the state has committed itself to raising the academic requirements for a high school diploma. Last fall, New Jersey became one of 22 states to sign on to the American Diploma Project to increase high school graduation requirements, including more and harder math, science, and language courses.

This combination of eliminating SRA while raising expectations for high school graduation will put mounting pressure on secondary schools in New Jersey’s high poverty, urban districts. Unless there are dramatic changes and improvements in the way our urban high schools operate, there could be a spike in dropouts well beyond current levels.

One positive response would be to give added support and urgency to the new Secondary Education Initiative (SEI). The SEI, which grew out of the Abbott X decision, requires that by Fall 2008, all Abbott students in grades 6 to12 have access to small learning environments, a system of personalized student support and family advocacy, and college prep curricula. Initial implementation efforts, including the formation of district planning teams and a statewide network to support the reform, are underway. SEI provides a statewide framework for secondary school improvement. If we are going to avoid a "train wreck" when it comes to high school graduation rates, it’s going to take a serious, high profile effort to support the SEI and improve our middle and high schools as we raise expectations for them. For more information read ELC's Abbott Secondary Education Initiative or contact Stan Karp, skarp@edlawcenter.org.