LITTLE ROCK — Six Arkansas schools, including three in Little Rock, are among 1,700 campuses nationally in which 60 percent or fewer of the students who started at a school as freshmen went on to graduate from the same school, according to an analysis by Johns Hopkins University.
Nationally, about one out of 10 regular and vocational high schools - 12 percent - were labeled "dropout factories" by Robert Balfanz, who led a Johns Hopkins study of U.S. Department of Education data at the request of The Associated Press.
Balfanz said that some of the student loss between ninth and 12th grades could be attributed to student transfers to other schools, but most of the students dropped out.
In Arkansas, the six schoolsthat met the Johns Hopkins definition of a "dropout factory" represent 2.44 percent of the state's 246 high schools.
The schools are Little Rock's Hall High, J.A. Fair High and McClellan Magnet High; Lee High in Marianna; Strong High in Union County; and the nowclosed Waldo High School. Waldo High School was closed last year after the Waldo School District was annexed into the Magnolia School District.
Arkansas ranked 43rd in the nation in the percentage of its schools with three-year average student loss rates of 40 percent or more. South Carolina ranked first - or highest nationally - with nearly 52 percent of its schools falling into the high dropout category. Florida was second with 51 percent of its schools averaging a student loss rate of 40 percent or more be-tween ninth and 12th grades.
Little Rock School District Interim Superintendent Linda Watson and Hall High Principal John Bacon on Tuesday criticized the analysis for failing to take into account those students who transferred to other schools during their high school careers.
"All they did was look to see if kids were still at a particular school in 12th grade," Bacon said about the study. "They didn't look to see if they legally, legitimately transferred. They didn't ask if the students died. They didn't ask any questions as to why."
Bacon acknowledged that students at Hall and in other urban areas - as well as rural areas where there is a lot of poverty - come and go between ninth and 12th grades.Hall, in particular, is affected in part by the makeup of its attendance zone, he said. The zone includes transition facilities and shelters that house teenagers who attend Hall for a short time.
"If they [the study's authors] had said these schools were labeled as highly mobile schools or schools with a transitional population, I'd have no problem with it," Bacon said. "But this concept of labeling theseschools as 'dropout factories' when those kids are not dropouts - I would have [had] data that we could pull up that would show they didn't drop out. They transferred. A lot of these urban districts have transitional populations. People have to move because they can't pay the rent. The phrase 'dropout factory' is just not accurate."
Watson said the state's own calculation of the high school graduation rate is a more accurate reflection of what is occurring at a school.
"They didn't figure it right," Watson said about the national study.
The schools' graduation rates as calculated based on a state formula and reported on each school's state-issued report card are higher than the three-year averages calculated by the Johns Hopkins analysis.
At Hall, for example, 60 percent of ninth-graders on average were still enrolled at their school in 12th grade, according to the study. The study reported ninth-grade enrollment for Hall's Class of 2006 was 394. By the time they were seniors, enrollment dropped to 227.
The 2006 graduation rate for Hall as calculated using the state formula was 76 percent.
Fair High had an average student retention rate of 60 percent compared with a 2006 graduation rate of 82 percent.McClellan had an average three-year retention rate of 51 percent compared with a Class of 2006 graduation rate of 72 percent.
Elsewhere in the state, Lee High had a three-year average retention rate of 53 percent and a 2006 graduation rate of 66 percent. Strong High had a three-year average retention rate of 44 percent and a 2006 graduation rate of 86 percent.
Superintendents and high school principals in the Lee County and Strong school districts could not be reached for comment at their offices Tuesday afternoon.
Julie Johnson Thompson, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Education, on Tuesday attributed the gaps between the Johns Hopkins numbers and the Arkansas Education Department's graduation rates to the simpler calculation used by Johns Hopkins.
"The state graduation formula takes into account how many students transferred in, how many transferred out, deaths, and incarcerations," Thompson said. "All that plays into the graduation rate."
Thompson said the Johns Hopkins analysis, however, brings attention to the needs of students and schools.
"It's good in that it drives the conversation about high school and how to engage students andhave them succeed," Thompson said.
The Johns Hopkins analysis is a continuation of work started in 2001 by that university's Center for Social Organization for Schools, according to the organization's Web site.
The schools identified for high student loss were those in which graduating classes of 2004, 2005 and 2006 included no more than 60 percent of the students who had started high school in 2001, 2002 or 2003. Schools had to have an enrollment of at least 100 to be included in the analysis.
Balfanz called the comparison of ninth to 12th graders at a school "promoting power" data.
"The main reason 'promoting power' would be lower than a school's reported graduation rate is if there is substantial net out migration [of students]," he said in a statement posted Tuesday on the Center for Social Organization for Schools' Web site.
He also said that using a three-year average to calculate student loss at a school guarded against one-time events such as a large employer leaving town or a military base closing.
Ken James, Arkansas' commissioner of education, onTuesday welcomed the state's better than average national ranking in the analysis - seventh best among the states - but said there remains significant room for improvement.
"My big concern is that we are getting too many kids to the ninth grade level, not only in Arkansas but across the country, who have only a third- or fourth-grade reading level," James said. "When that happens that is putting a kid in a position where he or she is not going to be able to navigate any kind of [high school] curriculum. And they'll choose some other avenues, most often the dropout process."
Arkansas, Pages 9, 15 on 10/31/2007