Education Week - April 5, 2017 - 6

States Get More Leeway on Identifying 'Dropout Factories'
Fewer schools could
be targeted for help
By Catherine Gewertz
A recent move by Congress has
quietly opened a loophole that could
allow states to avoid publicly identifying some of their high school
"dropout factories" for intervention
and support.
It happened last month when Congress voted to dissolve accountability
regulations written by the Obama
administration for the Every Student Succeeds Act. With his signature, President Donald Trump finalized that move March 28.
When lawmakers dumped the accountability rules, they eliminated
a key clarification of a fuzzy portion
of the underlying law: It spelled out
exactly how states must calculate
their high schools' graduation rates
to see which ones need "comprehensive support."
The Every Student Succeeds Act
says that states must identify for
comprehensive support "all public
high schools in the state failing to
graduate one-third or more of their
students." It is an attempt to identify and support schools with high
dropout rates.
But the way ESSA is written
could allow states to use graduationrate calculations that inflate the
numbers, such as those that include
students who finish in five or six
years, or those who receive GEDs
instead of diplomas.
Under former President Obama,
the U.S. Department of Education
closed that loophole when it created regulations for the law. The
rules specified that when states
identify their high schools with
low-graduation rates, they must
use the four-year adjusted-cohort
graduation rate, which tracks the
proportion of each freshman class
that earns regular diplomas four
years later.
With those rules now set aside,
states could theoretically use other
kinds of graduation-rate calculations that identify fewer schools for
improvement.
"That's not OK, and it's a problem," said Phillip Lovell, the vice

HOW MANY HIGH SCHOOLS QUALIFY FOR INTERVENTION?
The Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to identify high schools with low graduation
rates for "comprehensive support." Based on 2014 data, 15 states would have more than
50 schools that graduate less than 67 percent of their students in four years. Seven of those
states would have more than 100 such schools.

98
63

63
276

180
135

50

94

203
110

121
64

A Look at States' Plans

56

53

203
States that would have more than
50 low-graduation-rate schools (15)
States that would have more than
100 low-graduation-rate schools (7)

SOURCE: "Building a Grad Nation" 2016, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University

president of policy development
and government relations at the
Alliance for Excellent Education,
an advocacy group that focuses on
high school issues. "I hope states
don't look at this as an opportunity
to game the system."

New Guidance Allows Leeway
Other sections of ESSA that pertain to graduation rates are clear:
They require states to use the fouryear cohort rate as an indicator in
their accountability systems, and
in calculating long-term and interim goals. But no such specificity
exists in the section about identify-

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ing high schools for improvement.
It also doesn't exist in the guidance that the Trump administration
issued to replace the accountability
regulations.
Like ESSA itself, the new guidance says states must use the
four-year adjusted-cohort graduation calculation as an indicator in
their accountability systems and in
setting goals.
But the section about identifying
high schools for support says only
that schools must "describe" their
"methodology" for identifying all
high schools "failing to graduate
one-third or more of their students."
"There was great clarity about
the grad rate requirements under
the [Obama accountability] regulations, but this is an area where
it isn't as clear now," said Bethany
Little, a principal at EducationCounsel, a consulting firm that is
advising states and districts on
ESSA implementation.
"People are asking questions
about what they can do now. It's
causing confusion."
Some activists who focus on high
school issues don't anticipate that
states will lower the bar in identifying schools with high dropout
rates.
Amanda Karhuse, the director of
advocacy for the National Association of Secondary School Principals,
said states are so accustomed to
using the four-year-cohort method
for their accountability systems-
something required by regulations

kins University researcher who
led that study, said it's "definitely
a potential concern" that setting
aside the ESSA accountability regulations could allow states to use
more-permissive calculations to
identify their low-graduation-rate
schools.
"What it opens the door to is
states deciding that high school
is too late, that they'd rather
take the Title I money for school
improvement and put it in the
early grades," he said. "And if you
want to do that, you'd want to
identify fewer high schools [for
improvement]."
But he's hoping that the prospect
of getting federal money to improve
schools, without the restrictions of
the Obama administration's School
Improvement Grant program, will
encourage states to use the fouryear graduation rate when they
decide which high schools need
support.

issued in 2008, at the request of the
nation's governors-that she doesn't
think it's likely they'll suddenly
use a different calculation for the
purpose of identifying schools for
support.
Anne Hyslop, who worked on
the Obama accountability regulations as an Education Department
staffer, said there's risk in identifying too many schools for comprehensive support.
Not all states will have long
lists of schools that fail to graduate two-thirds of their students in
four years. But in those that do,
states "will be very hard-pressed to
have the capacity to serve all those
schools," said Hyslop, who is now a
senior associate for policy and advocacy at Chiefs for Change.
While inaction is never acceptable
when students attend schools with
high dropout rates, "the question
is, what is our capacity to support
the schools identified for improvement? That's what states will have
to think about," she said.

A Far-Reaching Problem
A 2016 report on high school graduation patterns, called "Building a
Grad Nation," calculated that of the
nation's high schools enrolling 100
or more students, 2,397 have fouryear graduation rates of 67 percent or less. (ESSA requires states
to report graduation rates of high
schools of that size or larger.)
Robert Balfanz, the Johns Hop-

More detail on how states will
identify their schools with high
dropout rates will emerge as they
file their ESSA plans, which are
due either this month or in September. According to "Building a
Grad Nation," 22 states would have
lists of 20 or fewer low-grad-rate
schools.
But seven states would have 100
or more high schools on the list of
those needing comprehensive improvement. Contacted by Education
Week, most of those states said they
are still drafting their plans and
couldn't yet say how they'll calculate
their high schools' graduation rates
to decide the issue of comprehensive
support.
But Arizona's and Ohio's draft
plans make it clear they'll use the
four-year cohort rate.
"I don't think the notion of a shortcut was anything that crossed our
minds," said Chris Woolard, the senior director for accountability and
continuous improvement in Ohio's
education agency.
Woolard said it makes no sense
to have an accountability system
based on one set of metrics, and
an improvement system based
on another. "We're trying to move
away from a system that's compliance-focused to one that's supportfocused."
John White, the superintendent of
schools in Louisiana, said he doesn't
think states need the accountability regulations to deal effectively
with identifying high schools with
low graduation rates. His state is
taking a different tack: It will provide comprehensive support to any
school that earns D or F grades in
its accountability system.
Under that system, White said,
it won't be possible for any school
with a four-year cohort graduation
rate of less than two-thirds to be
avoid being identified as needing
support.
Visit the High School & Beyond blog,
which tracks news and trends on this
issue. www.edweek.org/blogs
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