Nearly 9% of Class of '08 Dropped Out in Virginia

Armed With Precise Data, Educators Vow Action

Nearly 9 percent of Virginia public school students in the Class of 2008 dropped out during their high school years, most showing warning signs such as missing class frequently and repeating grades before giving up on school, state education officials said yesterday.

In Northern Virginia, Alexandria had the highest dropout rate, with 11.1 percent. Loudoun County had one of the lowest, 3.3 percent. The rate was 5.6 percent in Fairfax County. Statewide, Hispanic students were among the most likely to fail to graduate, with nearly 20 percent dropping out.

The Virginia Department of Education data, which offer the most detailed picture of the state's dropout problem to date, will allow schools to help those students who are most at risk. Previously, state officials had estimated the dropout rate.

Virginia is among a few states that have begun counting dropouts by assigning all students an identifying number and tracking their progress from the start of freshman year to graduation day.

States have only recently begun to develop the capacity to track each student over the course of a school career, a task that is especially difficult in areas where many students move between schools or to schools in different states. Others shift between private and public school.

Although Virginia officials said they are unhappy with the number of dropouts and will work to fix the problem, the state stacks up well against others that use similar calculations. In Massachusetts, where schools are highly regarded, the dropout rate for the Class of 2008 was 9.9 percent. It was 16 percent in Mississippi for the same class, and 15 percent in Michigan for the Class of 2007.

Maryland does not calculate an equivalent four-year dropout rate, but education officials estimate that 3.4 percent of high school students dropped out in the 2007-08 school year. D.C. school officials did not immediately respond to requests for information about dropouts.

Growing concern about thousands of students nationwide who fail to earn a high school diploma has prompted educators and policymakers to seek -- and even mandate -- a more precise accounting of how many students graduate in four years. States calculate graduation rates in different ways, prompting criticism that the dropout problem is understated.

Education advocates said Virginia's new accounting reveals important warning signs about students who are not on a path to graduation. Nearly 60 percent of Virginia dropouts repeated at least one grade in high school. More than 40 percent were freshmen or 10th-graders who were at least age 17. Dropouts were more likely to miss days of school, and many were students learning English as a second language.

"With data, you can make good decisions. It will help everyone, from the teacher and the principal in the classroom to the Virginia state legislators," said former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group seeking to improve high schools. "This is the difference between doing voodoo prayer and doing brain surgery."

Former education secretary Margaret Spellings used her regulation authority to require that by 2011, all states use the same formula to calculate graduation rates. The Obama administration included $250 million in the stimulus package to help states develop better data systems that will support such tracking.

For the Virginia report, the state Education Department tracked 96,152 students who entered as freshmen in fall 2004. About 82 percent earned diplomas in the traditional four years. Students who graduated with a GED, those still in school and those on long-term medical leave were counted neither as dropouts nor as on-time graduates.

In Alexandria, where more than 11 percent dropped out, Superintendent Morton Sherman said he will use the data to focus prevention programs. "While we know that certain factors such as poverty or limited English proficiency are considered risk factors for dropping out, we are not making excuses," he said.

Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright called for school leaders to place a "laserlike focus" on students who are at risk of dropping out. But she steered clear of prescribing solutions, saying that individual school systems would know what is the best way to help struggling students.