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I'm loving this report, it's full of pretty interesting data, and all sorts of recommendations. I'm glad to see several states making pretty dramatic leaps. Perhaps more states should look at that TN law which requires students to stay in school until they are 18 in order to keep their drivers license?

Also, how does Alaska have a graduation rate under 70%?? And why is Utah getting worse? Get it together guys.

"Statewide data systems should track and
link student data K-16. These data systems should have the
capacity to share and link data with other key systems in
the state, including child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental
health, to ensure schools respond appropriately to at-risk
and highly mobile students. States should share data across
borders, given the highly mobile student population. States
and districts should work together to ensure there are linkages
across data systems."

YOWWWW!! GOOD GRIEF... 88 pages of this stuff. Do I read "k-16" as "through college" correctly?!

Maybe instead of working to curb truancy, schools can start asking parents and children what they want changed. Then do that. The entire PDF seems to take public education, with a diploma as the final proof of achievement, as the only norm. It realllly isn't. I know that ps children constitute the majority, but it comes off as pretty haughty and full of assumptions.

Each of these states, further, has its own way of measuring itself. That's not a bad thing, but it's something to consider when looking at things like "number of dropout factories." Here in Kansas City, they're closing half the schools! You can't tell me that won't decrease the number of problem schools. There will just be fewer but more crowded bad schools nobody in the surrounding suburbs wants to attend. :)

I also have to note that the corporate sponsors of this study are liberal. Let's see if Vision Forum would come out with the same "results." Seriously. I take AT&T with the same grain of salt I would take Vision Forum. They're NOT exactly objective, yk?

PS Though I would agree with your statement that more intensive reading and other helps ought be given in the earlier grades rather than after a severe problem has manifested.

Anne,

I take umbrage at the term "dropout factory". I hate that term. It implies that the staff at the school is making the kids drop out. Give me a break. The staff are under assault from the kids. The staff wants to help; the kids are hostile. Or indifferent. They're so enmeshed in a dysfunctional culture that it's nigh impossible for any mortal to raise them up. The kids' parents, in general, have little intellectual capital to impart to the kids --in terms of knowledge/vocab. OR habits/attitudes. The schools don't fail the kids --the low-income, low-education culture of the community fails the kids. NO ONE has solved this problem. KIPP and other charter schools are de facto skimmers --only the motivated, with-it parents enroll in the lottery. And only the functional students manage to avoid being kicked out of KIPP. The rest get bounced back to the regular school that you (and Guggenheim and co.) malign as drop-out factories. Maligning the decent adults who get psychologically beat up day in and day out, trying their best to eke out a few meaningful lessons in a combat zone. It's unfair and intellectually weak. It belies a failure to comprehend the nature of the situation.

I'd like to add that many of the "bad" teachers talked about in Waiting for Superman were probably smart, decent adults who'd been beaten down by out-of-control, vicious teenagers (yes, I said that; it's a truth few private-school educated rich reformers understand). I have such a friend who taught in NYC. One of the moms profiled in Waiting complained that she had had an economics teacher in her Bronx HS who refused to teach. Gives the impression that laziness is the problem. Defeat is more likely. Why do ed reformers fail to acknowledge the horrendous harshness of these inner city schools? The issue is NOT the teachers --it's the students! And the only solution may be skimming off the kids who are willing to behave and learn --a la KIPP.

Matt - For sure.

Happy Elf Mom - "Maybe instead of working to curb truancy, schools can start asking parents and children what they want changed. Then do that." Maybe - but if schools are working to make the changes that parents and children want to get them to come to school, then aren't they in some ways working to curb truancy?

Also, you are right that the report seems to take a diploma as the final proof of achievement as the only norm, though I would argue that while the report focuses on public schools they would include private ones in their graduation counts (it is just that fewer of those schools have the kinds of dropout rates that the report concentrated on reducing). But there are other measures of achievement that could be validated.

And point taken about crowding problems into fewer schools. That is a huge concern. Ideally, students from closing schools will into transfer into schools with a culture of high achievement. Fingers crossed that it works.

And Ben F - I am not sure where your second comment came from (this blog supports teachers wholeheartedly and takes serious issue with the "Superman" reform philosophy).

But I understand your concern with the term "dropout factory". Hopefully you will notice that the only time I used it was in defining some of the findings of this report. I agree, if not that it implies that the staff at the school is making the kids drop out, but that it implies that it is the school. And I would hope that the end of this post makes clear that I personally do not believe that (you are the only person I've ever heard place me in Guggenheim's corner). There are always things that an individual teacher/parent/principal/student/school can do to improve, but the schools we term as "dropout factories" are as much a product of the systemic challenges of poverty and the way our society handles them as it is about anything else.

Anne,

I'm sorry for lumping you with the misguided reformers.

I do find it striking, though, how chary we all seem to be about alluding to the ugly mob aspect of the students in many of these schools. They're always innocent victims --of feckless teachers, in the Guggenheim view --of poverty, in the progressive view. I rarely hear anyone talking about tough discipline as a promising reform. Or anyone talking about how contumely behavior makes teaching well-nigh impossible --even by bushy-tailed TFA-ers.

Personally I tend to support the KIPP model, not because it saves kids from the clutches of feckless teachers, but because it saves kids from the raucous and rude kids at the regular public school. Can we save the lowest 30-60% in those schools? It may be beyond our powers, I fear, like bringing Enlightenment values to Afghanistan. Triage --a la KIPP --may be the best we can do. Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good. Viva KIPP and its skimming off. The problem with Guggenheim is that he doesn't realize that triage is the heart of KIPP's success, and therefore, KIPP-style achievement gains cannot be transferred to the rest of the inner city student population. Thus his attacks on the regular public schools are very unfair. Let's be frank: little real learning happens at many of these schools, and it's not the teachers' fault. The teachers make the best of a bad and fairly hopeless situation, serving mainly as daycare providers squeezing a little education in here and there when conditions permit. These adults should be supported, not scapegoated, just as the unsuccessful troops in Afghanistan should be supported. It's an impossible situation.

I'm curious to know if you think KIPP is essentially skimming, and if you support it as an imperfect-but-good model for ameliorating the situation of inner city schools.