Lost at the Last Minute

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Dropouts pay a steep price for leaving high school without their diplomas. In terms of wages, unemployment rates, and career mobility, the grim statistics have been lamented for decades, with the gaps between graduates and nongraduates widening rather than narrowing since the 1970s (ETS 2005; Orfield 2004). Our society also suffers--more crime and welfare, fewer tax dollars, and lower voter turnout. Not every dropout faces a bleak future, to be sure. But on balance, the disadvantages are substantial in a country where the lack of a high school diploma closes the door to nearly all skilled and white-collar jobs. The word dropout suggests that nongraduating youth have left the high school before the end of their senior year. Dozens of programs have been designed to coax them to return to school, and dozens more try to keep the potential dropout from exiting (Lehr, Clapper, and Thurlow 2005). But what about the students who persisted through the end of their senior year and then did not graduate? The vast literature on dropouts says very little about these students, yet in many schools they outnumber the seniors who left school before the end of the year. That is certainly the case in John Adams High School (pseudonym for a Delaware school), where 155 seniors from 2004 to 2006 fell short at the last minute, compared to 50 seniors who withdrew before then. What happened to those 155 nongraduating seniors? WHO IS LOST AT THE LAST MINUTE? Who are the nongraduating seniors? A few of the most salient characteristics about the nongraduating seniors at Adams are in Figure 1. FIG 1. Characteristics of nongraduating seniors. Nongraduating All seniors seniors Male 52% 46% Black 51% 46% Special education 16% 9% Eligible for free/reduced price lunch 37% 23% Repeated a year 58% 19% Days absent during senior year 35.4 16.7 High school grades for nongraduating seniors included a few A's and B's, but the bulk were C's (24%), D's (27.3%), and F's (24%), with the failing marks most frequent in the two subjects taken most often, English and mathematics. They had exactly twice as many disciplinary referrals, and they received almost three times as many suspensions. All of those figures fit the familiar attributes of students; only the nongraduating seniors' lack of transience-77% had been in this high school since 9th grade--did not match the well-known profile. Some of the nongraduating seniors soon became graduates. By attending summer school, 35% had their diplomas by August. Another 18% returned to school in September, but only 10 of those 28 repeaters were successful. Of the 47% whom the faculty did not see again, it's possible that some eventually earned their GED or even re-enrolled elsewhere. Even so, the loss of 12% of the senior class in those three years was an attrition rate that hurt the school's annual NCLB rating on graduating seniors and, more important, jeopardized the future of one-eighth of the class. The array of numbers doesn't fully convey the attitudes and dispositions of the nongraduating seniors. Can we say more than the obvious prediction that at-risk students have a statistically higher chance of not finishing? To understand why many students stumbled on the last lap, we turned from the statistics to interviews with students (four nongraduating seniors out of 15 invited to talk, and seven graduating seniors), counselors (the five who work with seniors), and five assistant principals. Additional information came from the minutes of the Student Intervention Teams, which help students with academic and behavior problems, and the authors' personal observations and informal conversations in the school. …