Dropout Prevention in the Middle Grades

Turning Points 2000: Lessons Learned P. Gayle Andrews Ensuring success for every student is the overarching goal of the model for improving middle grades education described in Turning Points 2000: Educating Adolescents in the 21st Century (Jackson & Davis, 2000). Success is defined as achieving the Turning Points vision of a 15-year-old who has had a first-rate experience in the middle grades and has emerged intellectually reflective, en route to a lifetime of meaningful work, a good citizen, caring and ethical, and healthy. Young adolescents who are at risk of dropping out of school for any number of reasons are unlikely to achieve this vision without substantial support during the middle grades. This article explores the distress signals of dropout risk that can be identified as early as sixth grade and describes the results of research on one state's targeted initiative to provide critical support to young adolescents at risk of dropping out of school. The Graduation Crisis In Counting on Graduation: An Agenda for State Leadership, the Education Trust synthesized the latest data on state graduation rates and efforts to improve both high school completion rates and college preparedness. This recent report opens with a startling statement: "The United States is the only industrialized country in the world in which today's young people are less likely than their parents to have graduated high school" (Habash, 2008, p. 1; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2007). Some researchers contend that the U.S. has a much lower graduation rate than the approximately 84% that the U.S. Census Bureau and Current Population Survey reports (Miller, Rothstein, & Rouse, 2007; Thornburgh, 2006). For example, the Census Bureau does not include populations such as transients, prisoners, and the military in reporting (Thornburgh, 2006) . Adding to the complexity of this issue, the federal government does not provide a national and universal formula for calculating graduation rates. Therefore, states have been allowed to develop their own formulas, and much of the reporting is inconsistent from state to state (Habash, 2008). Although there may be some inaccuracies in the collecting and reporting of data related to dropping out, our national graduation rate likely ranges from 64% to 71% (Greene, 2002). In an Editorial Projects in Education Research Center report from April 2008, Swanson summarized an important aspect of the graduation crisis. If three out of every 10 students in the nation failing to graduate is reason for concern, then the fact that just half of those educated in America's largest cities are finishing high school truly raises cause for alarm. And the much higher rates of high school completion among their suburban counterparts-who may literally live and attend school right around the corner-place in a particularly harsh and unflattering light the deep undercurrents of inequity that plague American public education. (p. 15) According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2000), there are 27,067,510 individuals in the United States between the ages of 18 and 24. Of these individuals, 6,834,627 do not have a high school diploma or equivalency. Of these, 2,884,097 are females, and 3,950,530 are males. The data represent a significant gender disparity, given that one million more males than females have not obtained a high school diploma or equivalency. Additionally, 16% of children under the age of 18 live in households where the household head is a high school dropout (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2008). Within the next few decades, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans likely will come to represent more than half of the United States population, making the country majority minority (Wasow, 2005). That emerging demographic shift occurs in a context and a history of academic sorting and sifting and achievement gaps that affect racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately (Delpit, 1995; Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003). …