Regulating The Issues Of Dropout Rates In School Districts In Texas
Education is not only the starting point of an individual’s life path, but it also greatly influences the future and well-being of communities, states, and the nation. Education bridges the gap between adolescence and adulthood. A person’s ability to receive education is what determines what job he or she will have when older and the individual’s quality of life.
A high priority is put on education in Texas, and as a result great measures are taken to ensure that as many students as possible are receiving an education. One way the Texas Education Agency (TEA) makes sure that a high number of students are receiving education is by monitoring dropout rates in school districts and combating high dropout rates with strategies that minimize dropouts. The major policy that allows Texas to control dropout rates is the Dropout Prevention Strategy Plan Policy and was adopted in 2007. This policy outlines the steps a school must take when its dropout rate becomes too high. The steps include drawing up a plan that explains in detail how the school will develop and carry out programs to decrease its dropout rates. A school may potentially be required to submit a dropout prevention strategy plan. If a school’s dropout rate reaches a point that is too high, based on factors such as the district location and the number of dropouts that school will tolerate, then that school will be asked to submit a dropout prevention strategy plan. However, before schools are directly asked to submit a plan, the Commissioner of Education may just notify the schools each year that have a high dropout rates of the requirements to send in a prevention plan.
The Commissioner of Education in Texas is currently Mike Morath who was appointed by Governor Greg Abbot and took office in January 2016. The commissioner is the head of the TEA and is in charge of preschool through high school education in both public and charter schools. Every year the Commissioner of Education identifies the schools that have high dropout rates and what percentage of these schools will need to submit a dropout prevention strategy plan. The dropout prevention plan has several components to it that must be included.
The first is that the plan must include an analysis of the factors that contributed to the high dropout rate using careful evaluation and assessment data that is available to the school district. Next, a school must outline what programs and activities they will use that they believe will help to decrease the number of dropouts in the school. Then a school must determine how much the activities will cost and what portion of the district provided allotment funds will be used for those activities and programs. The plan should also address certain benchmarks that will allow the school to measure the evidence of change within the school. After that, the school will need to determine the resources that will be needed and used in order to implement its programs and activities. Next, a timeline for the implementation of the chosen programs and activities should be outlined so that the school and commissioner both understand when they should begin to see a positive change in the school’s number of dropouts. Finally, the plan needs to include a description of how such activities and programs will be coordinated when keeping in mind that the funds at hand are limited. The dropout prevention strategy plan, when finished, must be submitted no later than December 1st of the school year preceding the school year in which the school district will receive the compensatory education allotment and the high school allotment. Both of these allotments are funds given to a school that are allocated under the TEA.
Once a strategy plan has been finished by the school, the commissioner will then determine how it will be submitted to the TEA. A review of the plan will be conducted and completed by the commissioner no later than March 1st of the school year preceding the school year in which funds for the school’s plan would be given. Until a plan is approved in writing by the commissioner, a district may not spend more than 25% of the district’s compensatory education allotment and high school allotment. The commissioner may also impose penalties if a school district fails to submit its plan by December 1st, submits a dropout prevention plan but fails to meet all of the specifications, or spends more than 25% of the allocated funds before the plan is approved by the commissioner. This dropout prevention policy was put into place because in the early 2000s there were many students who were dropping out of high school, and year after year no improvement was seen. In fact, according to the written report by John M. Bridgeland, titled The Silent Epidemic, almost one third of all public high school students in America did not graduate with their class in 2006. The majority of these students dropped out of school with less than two years left of their high school education. The effects of students dropping out not only negatively influence the lives of those students, but the community is also influenced. Students who dropout of high school have a higher chance than others who stay in school to be “unemployed, living in poverty, receiving public assistance, in prison, on death row, unhealthy, divorced, and single parents”.
The community and nation as a whole also suffer the consequences of high dropout rates due to a decrease of productive workers and an increase in the costs of supporting dependent people through imprisonment, health care, and social services. The government takes a double hit when students drop out of school because not only is that student not generating a substantial amount of money from his or her job, but the student also needs money from the government just to survive. In fact, 4 out of every 10 young adults between 16 to 24 who did not graduate from high school received government assistance in 2001. Studies have also shown that for people who do not graduate from high school and later become a felon or deal with drugs end up costing the government 1. 7 to 2. 3 million dollars in their lifetime. When adolescents drop out of high school, the effects are detrimental to not only the individual, but also to everyone around them. It is for this reason that the TEA decided to create the dropout prevention plan policy. The TEA aimed to help students and their futures by creating programs and activities to motivate them to earn their high school diploma. However, before such programs could be decided, the TEA had to understand the reasons that caused students to dropout of high school.
The factors that compel high school students to dropout of school vary greatly, so the strategies that compensate for high dropout rates also must vary greatly. There are numerous reasons as to why a student would drop out such as a lack of motivation, the financial needs of a family that may require a student to work full-time, or perhaps a learning disability. A student’s decision to dropout may also greatly be affected by their peers or teachers. Due to the wide range of reasons a student chooses to dropout, the TEA must have a large range of solutions to prevent students from dropping out. Many strategies have been used by the TEA to help reduce the dropout rate, and the agency has found certain strategies that work best. In the report titled Best Practices in Dropout Prevention made for the TEA by the ICF and the National Dropout Prevention Center in 2008, a number of strategies are listed that worked best to reduce the dropout rate in Texas. These strategies included school-community collaboration, safe learning environments, family involvement, tutoring, alternative schooling, or career education. However, all these require more funds as well as more training to instruct faculty how to implement such programs. According to the report, the top three programs that were used in Texas costed from $190 to almost $700 per student. This is costly and can add up quickly if the dropout issue is not taken care of quickly and efficiently. According to a news article from The New York Times, the effects of the dropout prevention policy have been steadily showing a positive outcome since 2007. The article written by Morgan Smith, entitled “Texas’ Dropout Rate Shows Positive Signs” and explains how in 2012 many school districts including the two most populated districts in Texas, were experiencing increasing graduation rates in the prior three to four years. In fact, Dallas ISD had a 14 percent increase in its graduation rate. The article relates the increase in graduation rates to the programs that have been implemented to reduce dropouts. In my opinion, this article is unbiased and is not reported from a single perspective. It simply looks at the facts and then forms opinions based on the common trends that were analyzed. However, some people are still unsure if Texas is helping in the dropout issue. For example, a news article issued in 2015 from the Dallas Morning News by Terrence Stutz entitled “Critics Scrutinize Texas’ Unusual High School Dropout Rates, ” question if Texas school districts actually are experiencing an increase in graduation rates. This article gives readers two different perspectives but is clearly in favor of one. It explains how state leaders celebrate the fact that dropout rates are steadily decreasing, but how many skeptical critics do not believe this is true. The critics feel that state leaders could be dishonest and that school districts find many ways to bend the numbers to make it seem like their graduation rate is higher than it actually is.
Although many critics still do not believe that there is an increase in graduation rates, I believe that the programs are helping to some extent but perhaps not as much as school districts are expressing. Based on my research, I believe that it was not that civic participation had influence on enacting the dropout prevention policy but rather the lack of civic participation that influenced this policy. The climbing dropout rates in school districts are often unknown to the public and therefore not seen as an issue to take charge of by parents and students. As a result of the dropout rates going unnoticed, the TEA eventually had to step in and try to take care of the issue due to its negative effects.
I believe that more participation is needed to address the current dropout issue. If parents were just more informed on the issue, then they would be more inclined to be involved in their children’s lives and encourage them to go to school. Familial involvement has a major impact in students’ choices to attend school; therefore, by targeting the root of the issue, we would benefit from the situation as a whole. We can encourage civic participation by increasing the news coverage on the dropout issue. There were two articles on dropout prevention that I was able to find, and even the most recent article I found was from 3 years ago. By discussing this issue in the media, more people perhaps would be inclined to donate money or help out schools in whatever way they could.
Overall, the research assignment has shown me how much work and detail go into regulating the issues that schools face. There are many more policies that school districts must follow than I originally believed, but these policies have been put in place to give students a better learning environment. For example, the dropout rate has detrimental effects that not only hurt the students specifically, but also the communities and government. Something so small such as the choice of one student can have rippling effects on the nation. As a result, the TEA helps to control harmful acts such as these in order to create a healthier community.
