Reasons vary for low graduation rates

Four years means four years

Under the old system, which Georgia had used since 2003, schools were able to count students who took more than four years to graduate. Under the new system, the graduation rate is calculated by the number of freshmen who earn a diploma within four years.

Transfers and dropouts

Under the old system, schools counted dropouts only as those students who had declared their intentions not to return to school. Under the new system, if the school cannot verify that a student who has left the school has transferred to another school, then that student is counted as a dropout.

Riverdale High School in Clayton County had a 2012 four-year graduation rate of 43 percent. Another school in that district, Forest Park High, had a graduation rate of 48.7 percent.

DeKalb’s McNair High — whose graduates Tuesday were addressed by Gov. Nathan Deal at the Georgia World Congress Center — had a four-year graduation rate just shy of 47 percent in 2012. And in Atlanta Public Schools, more than a quarter of the high schools whose graduation rates were calculated in 2012 had rates below 50 percent.

In stark terms, that means 2012 graduation ceremonies at those schools included fewer than half of the students who might have marched with their freshman classmates.

The reasons for super-low graduation rates are nuanced and varied, according to interviews The Atlanta Journal-Constitution conducted with district-level and state education officials after the state released the 2012 four-year graduation rates on Tuesday. Ultimate responsibility for low graduation rates is diffuse, leading to a sort of everyone-so-no-one culpability that changes little when Johnny or Jane flunks or drops out.

Talking about low graduation rates isn’t easy. Several principals at schools with low graduation rates did not return telephone calls or respond to emails from The AJC asking a pair of direct questions: What happened, and what are you doing to fix it?

Clayton County, with a graduation rate of 53.6 percent for the district and graduation rates below 50 percent at two of its high schools, would not make any of its principals available to discuss the numbers. District spokesman David Waller explained that many of Clayton’s principals are completing their first or second year at their respective schools and are working hard to turn things around.

Steve Alford, spokesman at Atlanta Public Schools, offered a similar comment about the principal at Douglass High.

“We have a new principal at Douglass, and we have begun to see the impact of his leadership,” Alford said.

Douglass’ graduation rate was 47.6 percent in 2011, when it began using a $788,579 federal school improvement grant. In 2012, Douglass’ graduation rate fell to 40.5 percent.

Alford said APS has started a credit recovery program to help students who are in danger of not graduating. The district has launched a new virtual school and now requires more training for teachers, all with the goal of improving student performance and, ultimately, graduation rates.

APS, DeKalb and Clayton are by no means the only districts in metro Atlanta that have schools with poor four-year graduation rates. A list of the 25 metro Atlanta schools with the lowest graduation rates also includes schools from Cherokee, Gwinnett, Fulton, Henry and Cobb. Some of those schools are alternative, online or night schools that were set up to help students who did not succeed in traditional high school settings.

In reasoning the causes behind low graduation rates, education officials cited factors as varied as low parental involvement, transience and limited English skills. But no factor was mentioned as frequently as poverty.

An analysis of poverty and graduation rates by The AJC found that metro Atlanta districts with the lowest percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch in October 2011 had the highest graduation rates in 2012.

Forsyth, Decatur City and Fayette had the lowest percentages of students eligible for free and reduced lunch in metro Atlanta, and those districts also had the highest graduation rates. Cobb had the fifth-lowest percentage of free and reduced lunch, and it had the fifth-highest graduation rate.

Marietta City, DeKalb, Atlanta Public Schools and Clayton had the highest percentages of students eligible for free and reduced lunch, and those districts all placed in the bottom four in graduation rates.

“It should be no secret that lower-income communities are faced with greater challenges as per graduating students,” said Verdaillia Turner, president of the Georgia Federation of Teachers. “We are faced with dropouts because folk go to work, have kids, have to keep kids, can’t make it in regular schools because support systems may not be in place.”

For Georgia taxpayers, low graduation rates mean more than mere embarrassment. Low rates cost money, though the precise amount is unclear.

Georgians spent $8,559 per pupil on K-12 education in fiscal year 2012, which ended on June 30. Figures from the state Department of Education show that 37,839 students did not graduate in 2012 from the high school where they started. For the unknown percentage of those students who remained in a Georgia public school (as opposed to dropping out or leaving the state), Georgia taxpayers were faced with costs they would not otherwise have borne had those students completed their studies in four years.

Eventually, however, Georgia taxpayers stand to gain when students stay in high school, for however long, and graduate.

A survey released in 2012 by the U.S. Census Bureau found that high school graduates earned nearly $11,000 more per year than those who did not graduate. And, on a national level, a high school graduate provides taxpayers with a net benefit of $127,000 over the course of the graduate’s lifetime, according to an essay written for The New York Times by Henry M. Levin, professor of economics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and Cecilia E. Rose, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University.

Georgia Superintendent John Barge agreed with those who argued that the reasons for low graduation rates are varied and that poverty is a significant factor. But that doesn’t mean improvement can’t be made, he said.

Barge pointed to Mitchell County High School in southwest Georgia, which improved its graduation rate from 56.86 percent in 2011 to 75.3 percent in 2012. Nearly 89 percent of the school’s students were eligible for free or reduced lunch in October 2011.

To connect with parents, teachers at Mitchell rode the school bus to hand-deliver report cards, Barge said. School functions were held at community sites to make it easier for parents to attend.

“They’ve changed the culture in their community,” Barge said.

Andrew Patterson, who won a full scholarship to attend the U.S. Naval Academy after graduation from Roswell High School, said students have a better chance of graduating if they surround themselves with peers who understand the importance of school.

“When students don’t really see the importance of school, when they don’t say, ‘I’ve got to study; I’ve got to work hard,’ they struggle,” Patterson said. “Friend groups are really important. I know they were for me.”

Richard Quartarone, president of the Southeast Atlanta Community for Schools, which has APS’ Maynard H. Jackson Jr. High as its main high school, said the path to improved graduation rates starts in preschool. Jackson’s 2012 graduation rate was 56.2 percent, and Quartarone said no quick fix will improve it.

“It’s a very long process, and it requires everybody to participate — all the parents, all the teachers, all the administrators, all the principals,” he said.