WHS not ‘dropout factory’

WASILLA — Principal Dwight Probasco was stunned during a morning staff meeting this past week to hear Wasilla High School made a researcher’s roster of schools nationwide deemed “dropout factories.”

Wasilla has a climbing graduation rate that is undeserving of the title “dropout factory,” Probasco said. In 2004, WHS had a graduation rate of 74 percent, which increased to 76 percent for 2006 and 83 percent for 2007.

Even so, Wasilla High was among those tagged in the national study as a school that ultimately fails to graduate more than 60 percent of its incoming freshmen. Administrators say the label is unfortunate, unfair and — most importantly — untrue.

The difference between the district’s reported rate of 83 percent and the study’s of less than 60 percent is a numbers game, Probasco said. It’s in how the numbers are used by Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University researchers.

“Personally, professionally, it was a shock,” Probasco said.

He is as much angry at the university’s describing a public school as a “dropout factory” as he is at researchers’ claims based on a methodology that counts the number of students who start as freshmen and then tallies how many are left by the time they are seniors. The study’s method is to take a class that starts with 400 freshman students and ends with 260 seniors and subtract for the students who are missing at the end of four years.

“The 140 that are left the Johns Hopkins study counts as dropouts,” Probasco said. “Very few of them are dropouts.”

The district is in a growing area with parents who sometimes change jobs. The district has open enrollment policies and it is not uncommon for students to start at one school and transfer to another, Probasco said. The Johns Hopkins study doesn’t track specific students. So, if a student began as a freshman at Wasilla High School and graduated from a different school, he or she would be considered a “dropout.”

District administrators used the survey’s “Promoting Power” method, which Probasco said is also known as a “cohort survival rate,” and calculated how Wasilla High performed over a three-year period using state figures and the Johns Hopkins method. In 2004, when Wasilla High had a state-accepted graduation rate of 74 percent, the Promotion Power method would have ranked the school at 57 percent, a difference of 17 percentage points. In 2006, when Wasilla High graduated 76 percent of its senior class, the Promotion Power formula would have calculated the rate at 60 percent.

Graduation rates climbing

Alaska Department of Education figures show an increase in graduation overall from Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District schools, from an average of 76 percent in 2006 to 82 percent in 2007.

The Johns Hopkins study paints a broad picture of the nation’s schools. There were more than 1,700 high schools nationwide on a list Johns Hopkins University research scientist Robert Balfanz compiled for the Associated Press from U.S. Department of Education data. Those are high schools that graduate 60 percent or fewer of their students, the study states. Balfanz’s data indicates some students transferred to other campuses, but most simply dropped out.

Alaska has 40 high schools. The study indicates that seven of them, 17.5 percent of all schools, graduate fewer than 60 percent of their students. Three schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District are on the list: Ben Eielson Jr./Sr. High School, Lathrop High School and North Pole High School.

Other Alaska districts falling into that category are Lower Kuskokwim's Bethel Regional, Dillingham City's high school and North Slope Borough's Barrow High.

The state Department of Education didn’t question the Johns Hopkins report when news of the study first broke last week, but has since backtracked.

Over the past year, the Mat-Su School District pressed the state for programs to identify and retain at-risk students, said Deena Paramo, assistant superintendent of Education and Instruction. The district wants to create a “pyramid of support” that includes classes to help students in academic trouble recover credits and intervene when necessary to correct problems.

Mat-Su Director of Education Susan McCauley listed the following concerns she has with study’s methodology:

• Promoting Power is not consistent with graduation rate or dropout rate data, which are more direct measures of how many students graduate and how many students drop out.

• Promoting Power assumes students who transfer to another school have dropped out.

• Many Mat-Su students transfer into alternative schools from which they graduate.

• Many Mat-Su students transfer out of state.

Researcher ready for flak

School Board President Sarah Welton said the national study appears flawed and its message to the rest of the country that Wasilla High School is a “dropout factory” is unfortunate.

“‘Dropout factory’ is a term that stirs emotion,” said Welton, who is a professional counselor. “It’s not representative of what a school is.”

Welton has reviewed the study author’s testimony to a government body and has questions. “He says a lot, but he doesn’t show where [his information] came from.”

Welton said she fears the Johns Hopkins study could spark the federal government bleeding away education cash over what she sees as an issue of state control and rights.

Balfanz said he knew he’d receive criticism for his report.

“We acknowledge that some people may view the term ‘dropout factory’ [as] a harsh and unfair term,” Balfanz said in his testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. “We use it to describe a harsh and unfair situation — under-resourced and over-challenged high schools, which educate primarily low-income and minority students and year after year are unable to graduate the majority or near majority of students who enter the school. We recognize that these schools are filled with hard-working and dedicated teachers and administrators and resilient students.”

Balfanz said the study’s goal “is to shine a spotlight on what has been called a silent epidemic — the low graduation rates of the nation’s low-income and minority students — and to demonstrate that the dropout crisis is concentrated in a relatively small sub-set of schools.”

Probasco said the study is more damaging than anything else, but he knows the truth about how hard Wasilla High’s staff and the district work to try and cut the dropout rate to 0 percent.

“It did hurt,” Probasco said of the study. “For the staff, for the students, for this community.”

Probasco has not attempted to talk to researchers, but said a member of his staff sent an e-mail to Baltimore asking about the retention rate of Johns Hopkins University students from freshman to senior.

“It’s very competitive,” Probasco said of the university’s curriculum and campus environment.

Contact John R. Moses at john.moses@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.