Striving to Get Students to Drop Back In

D.C. law requires youths to attend school until the age of 18. Schools utilize automated dialing systems to notify parents within 24 hours of an unexplained absence. When elementary students miss 15 or more days in a semester, their parents can be reported to the attorney general's office.

The dropout problem is not uniform throughout the city. The average graduation rate was 69.9 percent for the Class of 2005. With only three dropouts that year, 96.3 percent graduated from Banneker Academic High School in Columbia Heights. Anacostia Senior High School, in contrast, had more dropouts than graduates -- 90 to 87 -- for a graduation rate of 49.1 percent.

Nationally, one-third of high school students leave school without a diploma, according to a March 2006 study by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation titled "The Silent Epidemic." A poll of nearly 500 dropouts found that they left school because classes were uninteresting, they had missed too many days or they lacked structure.

Turning the tide requires parental involvement. D.C. Superior Court launched a truancy initiative last year at Garnet-Patterson Middle School in Northwest, featuring weekly meetings with parents and students.

Many dropouts, rather than enjoying their time away from classrooms and homework, are seeking a way back into school. Marcus Alston, 19, sat in the Anacostia office of Peaceoholics last week, recalling how he passed unemployed men idling on street corners and wondered whether that was to be his fate.

Alston said that in January 2006, he was expelled from Anacostia High School as a 10th-grader after school officials accused him of being part of a gang that started a fight. Alston denies having anything to do with the altercation.

When he tried to enroll elsewhere, no school would accept him. So he got into "everything bad you could think of," Alston said. "I was always looking over my shoulder, always scared." Alston said.

On a friend's recommendation, Alston went to the nonprofit Peaceoholics group and talked to counselors. He ended up enrolling in a GED preparation class run by the city's Project Empowerment program. He spends his spare time taking practice GED tests on a computer.

There are many other government and nonprofit groups geared to dropouts.

Jobs for America's Graduates provides extra help in the classroom, tutoring and career and college counseling at four middle schools and high schools. The $1.75 million program is paid for through a mix of local and federal funds.

Some charter schools focus on dropouts. At YouthBuild, which opened in 2005 to serve dropouts ages 16 to 24, students learn construction skills, get paid for the work they do and study toward a GED or high school diploma. Their problems are myriad. More than 55 percent read on an elementary school grade level, and about one-third are parents. At the end of the one-year program, about two-thirds of students have increased their reading proficiency by at least two grade levels.

Booker T. Washington Public Charter School for Technical Arts prepares students to get a GED and teaches them a trade. That's where Carla Peatross, 50, is taking GED classes.

"I truly feel it's a blessing that people my age and who have made mistakes in life have time to correct them," Peatross said. "It's definitely my second chance."