School Dropouts Save Texas Money But Only in Short Term
Every time a student drops out of public school, taxpayers save money. That’s one fewer student, at an annual savings of more than $11,000 per year from state and local sources.
You might argue those kids will cost the state a lot of money someday, either as prison inmates, welfare recipients, or as part of an expanding number of weak links in the labor chain when employers come looking for educated workers.
But the immediate result is that the dropouts save money. And politicians respond to immediate things. Not to kick anyone in particular, but when was the ...
Comments (10)
Bill Betzen
"But the immediate result is that the dropouts save money. And politicians respond to immediate things. Not to kick anyone in particular, but when was the last time you saw a Texas governor or legislator with a 10-year plan?"
The horrific truth in this article happens in the same state that had a major role in the foundation of "No Child Left Behind." While lack of money to fund NCLB is not anything new, any such money saved due to the slowing of the progress made in rising graduation rates, must be documented and made very public.
While the legislature may be avoiding long rage planning, introducing 10-year planning in secondary schools is a central factor in a slowly spreading dropout prevention project in Dallas. It is the School Archive Project. It starts with a letter to their child by parents of all new middle school students. They write about their dreams for their child. The student then brings this potentially priceless letter to school to use in a week long Language Arts project, writing a letter to themselves about their own dreams and how they will work on them in middle school. Both letters are then placed into one self-addressed envelope for each student. These envelopes are then placed on the shelf for this class inside the 500-pound vault bolted to the floor in the lobby of the school under spotlights.
This valuable vault is then passed every day by the students as they go to and from class. Students may at times think of the letter from their mother and/or father inside the vault, and their dreams for them.
At the end of 8th grade these letters are returned to the students. New letters are then written by both parents and students. This time they focus 10 years into the future. This time the students hold the new self-addressed envelope, holding their new letters, for a Language Arts Class photo in front of the vault. They then place their envelopes into the vault for the next decade.
Both parents and children receive copies of that photo. On the back of the photo are details about the 10 year reunion, the need for eventual volunteers to help plan it, and the fact that they will receive their letters back at that reunion. It also reminds them that they will be invited to speak with the then current students about their recommendations for success. Students are warned to be prepared for questions from the decade younger students they speak with at the time of their 10-year reunion. Such questions will probably include: "What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"
This same process is repeated in high school, at the start of the 9th grade and at the end of the 12th grade. The good news is that this 2005 project was feeding student into a high school with a 2006 graduation rate of 33%, but, by 2011, that graduation rate was well over 60%! That high school saw a difference in students from the middle school Archive Project, and started a high school level Archive Project in 2009. This future long-range planning focus was certainly one contributing factor to the almost doubling of the graduation rate. It is now estimated that the number of diplomas will soon equal 70%, and then 80%, of the 9th grade enrollment 4 years earlier! That is the power of long range planning!
The Texas Legislature may want to explore the possibilities of such long range planning.
Maybe some of our students who are mastering the 10-year planning concept will become legislators, and/or governor someday, and help Texas thrive once again.
Texas Supe
Your dropout numbers miss a HUGE population: fake home school students. In my experience in public ed, a large number of students who are too young to legally dropout and who become upset with school rules will have their parents withdraw them to "home school," but then not actually do any home school learning. I would bet money that over half of all home school withdrawals in Texas are actually underage dropouts whose parents lied to the school. It's the great home school loophole.
Bill Betzen
Texas Supe, I agree with your concerns. That is why I only count students who are actually enrolled in school and do not consider the "laundered" dropout numbers used by most school districts and supported by the Texas Education Agency. We need to keep the numbers simple, full 9th grade enrollment compared with number of diplomas given out 4 years later. Yes, it is not perfect, but it is much more accurate than the "official" numbers that showed Houston and Dallas with single digit "dropout rates" in the years surrounding 2000. The Cumulative Promotion Index is the most accurate and predictive of the graduation rate measurements. You can see how this looks for Texas at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2011/01/texas-education-progress-endangered-by.html The charts on that page include the CPI measurements, and several others, for all of Texas over the past decade.
CindyMallette
A shallow argument based on the premise that money solves all problems. Believe me, conservatives DO NOT relish the high dropout rates in Texas, even if it does save a few paltry dollars. And equally fallacious is the idea that if we "properly funded" (what a subjective phrase) public schools that students would stay in, get a great education and go one to become doctors and rocket scientists.
The problem with public schools is the watering down of teaching so it's all geared toward the lowest-common-denominator. Also, teachers understand that if they really want to make a career out of education that they've got to get into administration, where the fat salaries are. Otherwise, they're stuck making $50,000/year for 30 years. And school administrators seem to think that iPads, football stadiums, and event centers improve education somehow.
Finally -- parents have a lot of responsibility for the high dropout rates. Too many parents look to public education to raise their children, taking the burden off of themselves. School was never designed to do that, and if parents were more involved, learning would improve and dropout rates would go down.
CindyMallette
@TexasSupe -- you are soooo sadly mistaken. I think home school numbers are on the rise in Texas for the simple fact that the quality of education in public schools is TERRIBLE. As a graduate of a public Texas high school that had an Exemplary rating, I know first-hand how crummy education standards are in public schools. As a result, my husband and I will be homeschooling our daughter.
Amazing statistics on how much better home school students perform versus their public school counterparts: http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp
Stuart Greenfield
Excellent piece. For years I thought our legislatures were not very compassionate, altruistic, or christain. In my years working for the state, it took a court ruling from Judge Sarah T. Hughes to have the constitutional amendment limiting welfare payments eliminated, Judge William Wayne Justice to remedy our less than benchmark prison system, and the Texas Supreme Court to resolve the funding inadequacy of our public education system. The thought that always crossed by mind was, "how could these guys be so dumb not to recognize the inadequacies?" It finally crossed my inadequate brain that the legislators were way way smarter than me and they fully recognized the time-value of money, a dollar spent 10 years from now is less than having to spend that dollar today. Running the state like a business is quite evident among our legislators.
P.S. let me apologize to all legislators who I considered dumb, as it is quite evident that none of them dropped out to save the state $'s.
Texas Supe
Cindy,
I don't disagree that many parents choose to home school their students legitimately for a variety of reasons. I am contending that, in addition to these legitimate home school families (whose right to educate their children at home is a strength of our system), there are many parents who say they are home schooling but don't. I doubt I will be able to convince you of the reality of this phenomenon, so I won't try. I am only reporting what I've seen.
I also won't argue with you about how terrible or not terrible our public schools are. Your mind is already made up on that point.
Texas Supe
Cindy,
As far as the "amazing" statistics go, the phrase "selection bias" comes to mind. A group of children whose comparatively wealthy, comparatively homogeneous, comparatively culturally-dominant (i.e., white), comparatively highly-educated parents value education enough to take it into their own hands outperforms a heterogeneous sampling of students that is vastly more populated with special needs students, limited English students, and impoverished students, and is taught in a crowded classroom by a teacher who isn't their own flesh and blood and who can't really force them to study for tests or complete their homework. What a surprise!
Because of this selection bias, I can't agree that your statistics show that homeschool parents are better than public school teachers at educating children. I think it may demonstrate something a bit less impressive--that if we eliminate needy children from our rolls and have a very small student-teacher ratio, our scores will rise.
I'm not competing with you. I don't get to pick and choose the students I teach--and I don't want to. I want to serve in these dirty ditches of American life, where there is a culture that isn't whitewashed, where some children have parents who care as much as you do and who excel and I get to give them a little push on their way to the Ivy League, and where other children desperately need people like me to intervene in the trajectory of their lives. You can mock me for the dirt on my hands and ignore all the public school students who go on to great success; you can ridicule me for the special education children and non-English speakers whom I can't get to pass the TAKS test, and for the poor, abused, hungry, and lost kids who cross my path and wind up dropping out despite my honest efforts. But at least I try. Keep on telling people how "TERRIBLE" I am. It really only means I'm shining my light in a dark place.
David Spratt
The public school system is a disaster and one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer $ there is.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=2&oq=john+stossel&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS324US324&q=john+stossel+stupid+in+america
Google John Stossel Stupid in America.
Besides politics and Law this is the only profession that comes to mind where you can be less than effective to totally incompetent and still retain employment and get paid regardless. Our current educational system is the dinosaur that did not get the extinction memo. Costs go up and scores go down.
TD Winner
Public education needs real reform from the ground up. Consider yourself lucky these days if you get a good teacher who loves to teach. I see plenty of excellent teachers still, but many of them are growing weary. The ones who still teach truly love their jobs. Do you want to know why there are so many subpar teachers? Because teaching is considered a subpar profession by the general public. Teaching is not considered as respectable a profession as an engineer, lawyer, or doctor. The teaching profession does not attract the cream of the crop graduates like other professions do. Why? Because teachers do not get paid enough, and it is too easy to become a teacher. Make it just as difficult to get an education degree as it is to get a law degree, or an engineering degree. Pay teachers as much as engineers and lawyers. You get what you pay for. The way it stands now with all the accountability, standardized testing, rules and regulations, and paperwork it's a wonder so many good teachers are leaving the profession. The new ones had no idea they would have to work so much for so little, and the old ones are tired of working more and not getting paid more. Don't expect to see a new generation of awesome teachers when teaching is considered the "default" profession for people who can't get into engineering or med school.