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Dropping back in

Portland leaders come together to boost district’s 57 percent graduation rate

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Sep 17, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

JONATHAN HOUSE / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Sixteen-year-old Rachel Boyd talks with Suzanne Cash-Phelps, her teacher and mentor at Portland Public Schools’ new Transition Center. A would-be dropout, Rachel took online classes to earn her needed credits and worked with mentors to get back on track. She’s now set to earn her diploma in June.

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Rachel Boyd came close to ending up on the street, broke, out of a job and out of opportunities for the future.

At least that’s what the 16-year-old thinks could have happened if she hadn’t gone back to high school.

Like many teenagers, it wasn’t her motivation that was lacking — it was her life circumstances. Raised without her father, Rachel’s three older sisters had left home, leaving her to care for her mother, who suffered from mental health issues.

After failing classes in her freshman and sophomore years, and missing two months of school during her junior year, Rachel was forced to drop out of high school in Maryland when she couldn’t advance.

She quickly enrolled in an alternative program and did well, so she tried to return to her former school. But the transition was rocky, she says, and when her mother was hospitalized, she came to Portland to live with an uncle.

In North Portland for the first time this past spring, she struggled to find her footing again — until she discovered the Transition Center.

Comprised of four old shop classes at Benson Polytechnic High School — outfitted with new computers and a specialized teaching staff of five — the district in March opened the nation’s first high school alternative program that offers would-be dropouts “immediate re-engagement,” says Jenni Villano, the district’s education options director.

That means if students miss too many credits during the school year due to family problems or any other temporary setback, they may jump right back into their education at the Transition Center when they’re ready.

They’re not told to wait until the next semester begins, which is what happens at many schools and other alternative programs. Also, those programs are often at capacity.

“What they hear is, ‘You’re not wanted,’ ” says Villano, who runs Portland’s nationally lauded portfolio of alternative programs for students who’ve dropped out, have behavior or attendance problems or face other barriers such as drug or alcohol dependence, incarceration, homelessness or pregnancy.

Rachel was one of the first students at the Transition Center. Having completed her courses, she now is set to begin the “gateway to college” program at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus for her senior year.

She hopes to earn her high school diploma in June, go to college and become a meteorologist so she can track hurricanes — her childhood career dream.

Villano swells with pride when she thinks about Rachel’s success. Anywhere between 1,000 and 7,000 youths in the metro area are “disconnected” from high school, Villano estimates.

“So many times, they disengage for reasons other than, ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ ” she says. “We know these kids want to be successful. There isn’t a young person out there that doesn’t have a dream of success. By telling them, ‘Here’s what we’ve got for you’ — I think we could make a difference.”

Perhaps more than ever before, leaders at the local, state and national level have made high school graduation their top education priority, highlighting dismal statistics that include a 57 percent graduation rate in Portland.

Although no one is satisfied with that number, it doesn’t equate to a 43 percent dropout rate.

According to a May 2007 report by the Portland Schools Foundation’s “Connected by 25” coalition, 57 percent graduate in four years, but another 6 percent graduate in their fifth year.

The rest — 37 percent — have either dropped out, transferred to an out-of-state school, a private school or a home school, or they have obtained a General Education Development certificate, which doesn’t count as a high school diploma.

TRIBUNE PHOTO: L.E. BASKOW • Teacher Serena Talcott is one of four freshman academy teachers at Cleveland who meet regularly to discuss their students’ progress. Freshmen say taking their their English, history and science classes with the same group of peers in their academy gives them familiarity and comfort.

Big goals for graduation

Nationally, improving high school graduation is all the buzz. President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made it the focus of their back-to-school speeches in early September, and a number of dropout studies have recently been released.

Awareness of the issue “has been growing among the states, but this is the first time the president has taken a position, so that’s brought attention,” says Russell Rumberger, a professor of education policy at the University of California at Santa Barbara whose focus is dropout prevention. “With the president (focused on the issue), it sort of ups the ante.”

Whatever the actual dropout rate in Portland, the Connected by 25 report sparked a frenzy here, pushing local leaders to tackle the problem.

Mayor Sam Adams and Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler have appointed an education cabinet, a group of 60 local education, civic, nonprofit and business leaders who have set targets for improvement by 2013.

They want to raise Portland’s graduation rate from 57 percent to 86 percent, and increase the number of students who go on to post-secondary education or training after high school from 33 percent to 66 percent. A number of other strategies are also in the works.

Recently, the city approved giving all students free TriMet bus passes, a step that will go a long way toward leveling the playing field, Villano says.

As a district, “we have a lot of choice, but we don’t provide transportation for kids,” she says. “Students of privilege take the buses or drive. … Others have to figure out how to get across the city on their own.”

In part, the 2007 graduation rate report garnered so much attention because it was the first time in Portland and anywhere in the state that the figure was calculated with a “cohort” method, which tracks each ninth-grader through high school, rather than using a formula to calculate the rate.

Also called a longitudinal study, the cohort method is not foolproof, but it is more accurate than the formula used at the state level, Rumberger says.

More states each year are moving toward the cohort method. By 2011, the federal government has required that all states use it. The Oregon Department of Education will use the cohort method for ninth-graders the first time this school year.

“Everyone’s grad rates in the state are going to go down, because it’s a truer picture” than the state’s formula, Portland district spokesman Matt Shelby predicts.

But Portland’s dropout data might be on its way to getting even more accurate. This fall, the district began using a new software program called Certify.

The software will streamline the intake of data at the school level — everything from attendance to discipline, credits and grades — so that the data can be verified at any point during the school year, before it is sent to the state to be compiled.

More complete and accurate data will bring a more accurate dropout rate, says Sarah Bassett, spokeswoman for Massachusetts-based Certica Solutions, which produces the software.