By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer
The Tulsa Learning Academy has so many high school dropouts dropping back in, even a new evening session won't eliminate its waiting list.
The academic credit recovery program located in Tulsa Promenade will enroll another 15 students in the coming month thanks to a new partnership between Tulsa Public Schools and Tulsa Technology Center.
"We will be pulling from the 20 to 30 students that are on our waiting list all year, and we expect a flood of students lacking a half-credit to graduate in May (to apply)," said Principal Jean Keeton.
TLA gives kids who have already dropped out or who are at risk of not graduating on time an opportunity to earn credits through a self-paced, Web-based computer program. About 45 students are enrolled at any given time in the morning and afternoon sessions of the year-round program.
Rick Palazzo, director of alternative education for Tulsa Tech, said sponsoring a third session, which will require two new teachers and a part-time counselor, seemed like an obvious way to help more Tulsa students.
"We had received a Kaiser Family Foundation grant with the charge being to help TPS students at risk of not graduating, so when we heard about the waiting list, it was kind of a natural progression," Palazzo said.
The arrangement will allow for TLA to be open to students in the evenings Monday through Thursday, and Saturday morning.
Once students complete their credits at TLA, they earn a diploma from their home high school in the Tulsa district. In turn, the high school gets credit toward its graduation rate, which is monitored by state officials.
Students say it's that second shot at a diploma — not an equivalency certificate — that draws them in.
"It's your second chance. Everybody should get a second chance," said 19-year-old Devon Durham, who dropped out of Edison Preparatory School during his senior year. Durham, like many TLA students, left high school after falling behind in credits.
"I knew I wasn't going to graduate, so I figured, why bother?" he said.
Durham spent months on the program's waiting list before he was able to enroll. When he did, he was blown away by how different the program is from traditional high school.
"They treat you like a professional here. It's more like a real world job environment. Everyone's respectful and the computer is like your own private classroom," he said.
Nick Johnson, 18, started at TLA in August needing four credits to graduate. Attendance problems during his freshman year at Central High School had left him struggling to catch up.
At TLA, there are no "distractions," he said. "I miss a couple of my teachers. That's about it."
The reason 19-year-old Whitney Turner had for leaving high school — personal problems — is another common one TLA counselors hear from applicants.
Turner started out at Central and then ended up at Project 12, an alternative school. One day, she walked out and never came back.
"I was never really discouraged — I just didn't care," she said. "I was going through some stuff. I didn't really like it there."
Today, Turner is working to complete 2 1/2 credits toward her diploma, and back on the path to her goal of attending Tulsa Community College, then the University of Texas and eventually becoming a pediatrician.
Durham has plans to earn an associate's degree and enter law enforcement, maybe as a police officer in Suffolk County, New York, where he had lived.
Johnson wants to attend the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, or Spartan School of Aeronautics.
Andrea Eger 581-8470
andrea.eger@tulsaworld.com
By GAVIN OFF Data Editor
More than 120 students dropped out of Tulsa County middle schools during the 2006-07 school year, state data show. Yet each middle school recorded a 0 percent dropout rate in Oklahoma Department of Education records.
Although the Department of Education counts each dropout, it doesn't include all of them when calculating a school's dropout rate.
Under state regulations, the department excludes students who haven't reached ninth grade or are 19 years or older.
As a result, more than 1,030 dropouts in Oklahoma were left out of the 2006-07 dropout rate calculations, according to Tulsa World analysis of Department of Education data.
Spokeswoman Shelly Hickman said the education department follows state and federal regulations regarding its dropout rate calculations.
Hickman added: "Middle school children are not able to drop out. If they are not attending school, they are considered truants and their parents subject to prosecution by the district attorney."
But thousands of middle school students do drop out each year, and many states include them in their calculations.
The limitations states put on dropout rates make the state-reported rate for some schools look lower than it actually is, said Albert Cortez, director of policy for the Intercultural Development Research Association, a San Antonio nonprofit aimed at improving public schools.
"You can try to sweep it under the rug, and you can try to manipulate those numbers, but the reality is those folks are still living in your community," Cortez said. "It's not like dropouts disappear."
Cortez said dropouts have higher unemployment rates, higher incarceration rates and higher job training costs. Also, they usually earn less and contribute less to a community's tax base, he said.
Young dropouts
Nearly every state has its own way of calculating a school's dropout rate.
Oklahoma refers to the rate as the "number of students enrolled in grades nine through 12 under the age of 19 who drop out of school annually."
But that sometimes leaves schools with incomplete data.
The difference is often small, but it can be significant when it comes to perception, said Jay Smink, executive director for the National Dropout Prevention Center/Network at South Carolina's Clemson University.
"If you're telling me that you don't count a dropout before ninth grade, that's a bad thing," Smink said. "If you want an accurate number of who's dropping out, that will skew your data."
More than 100 elementary and middle schools in Oklahoma recorded at least one dropout during the 2006-07 year, a Tulsa World analysis found. In all, more than 500 non-high school students left school that year.
At least four Oklahoma City middle schools — Taft, Oklahoma Centennial, Jackson and Emerson Alternative Education — had dropout rates higher than the 2005-06 national public high school average of 3.9 percent, according to a World analysis.
Older dropouts
To find the dropout rate, the Tulsa World divided a school's total dropouts by its total enrollment for that year. Unlike the Department of Education, the World counted dropouts who did not reach ninth grade and those 19 or older.
Hickman said that even though older students aren't included in a school's dropout rate, they are counted against a school's graduation rate.
"We follow state law and federal (No Child Left Behind) regulations in regard to dropout reporting and calculations," she said in an e-mail.
No Child Left Behind, which was created in 2001, does not limit dropouts to a certain age but specifies criteria for graduation rates. Unlike dropout rates, which are calculated by using data from a single year, graduation rates look at the number of students who begin their freshmen year and graduate four years later.
In all, 525 students 19 or older dropped out of Oklahoma high schools, data show. None were included in the dropout rate calculations.
Some officials outside Oklahoma said they didn't see the benefit of such an age limit.
Under Colorado law, students who reach the age of 21 are automatically considered dropouts, even if they remain in school.
Likewise, the National Center for Education Statistics, which operates within the U.S. Department of Education, does not confine dropouts to a certain age. Neither do most other states.
"He can stay in school as long as he wants," said Tom Ogle with the Missouri Department of Education. "But he's a dropout when he drops out."
Alternative degrees
According to Oklahoma regulations, students who leave school to get their GED are not considered dropouts.
The National Center for Education Statistics also excludes certified GED earners from dropout rate calculations.
But some states have taken a harder look at GED recipients.
Arizona calculates dropout rates for seventh- through 12th-graders, doesn't have an age limit and includes those who get their GED.
Bob Coccagna, Arizona's director of dropout prevention and high school renewal, said the state includes GED recipients in its dropout rate calculations to emphasize the importance of a standard high school education.
He said including a wider range of students allows Arizona to better target areas that need improvement.
"If you don't know what the number is, you don't know what the problem is," Coccagna said. "On one hand people don't like to display that information because it makes them look bad, but the transparency is important."
Gavin Off 732-8106
gavin.off@tulsaworld.com
Nearly 1,500 students from area high schools dropped out in 2006-2007.
By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer
High school dropout rates in the Tulsa area have been on the decline for more than a decade, but they still represent a significant number of students each year.
A Tulsa World analysis shows that Tulsa Public Schools' dropout rate decreased 2.35 percent between 1995 and 2006-2007, the last year for which official data were available.
Most other Tulsa County school districts also decreased during the same period, with the exception of Owasso and Union, where dropout rates increased 2.9 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
Still, data from the Oklahoma State Department of Education showed that almost 1,500 students from Tulsa-area high schools were counted as dropouts in 2006-07 alone.
"We must do everything in our power, recognizing the impact this has on the society and economy of Tulsa," said Tulsa Superintendent Keith Ballard. "We can't just say we're going to make kids stay in school. We must change to meet students' changing needs, and we must make schools more relevant."
To that end, a task force has been studying the need for more alternative education options in TPS, and a second task force is being formed to study what reforms are needed in the district's nine traditional high schools.
"A significant goal of our alternative education task force and our high school reform movement is addressing the dropout rate," Ballard said. "We are looking at schools within schools, schools of opportunity, even our schedules — because there are kids that just have to go to work."
Eighteen-year-old Nicole Thomas dropped out of Edison Preparatory School last fall for that reason.
"The problem was being in school all day when I only needed two credits. I live on my own, so I need a job to pay my bills. They filled my schedule with photography, choir, art — it drags it out a whole lot," she said.
Thomas looked into programs that give students an opportunity to earn their high school diplomas online, but the costs were just too steep for her.
Meanwhile, she kept getting automated phone calls from the attendance office at Edison, notifying her that "a student in your household is absent."
When she called to let school officials know she wasn't coming back, she ended up agreeing to a meeting with a guidance counselor. That meeting led her to enroll in a relatively new academic credit recovery program called Tulsa Learning Academy, or TLA.
Now she's working on just the credits she needs toward a diploma during half-day sessions at TLA, which is located at Tulsa Promenade, and then waitressing at a local restaurant to support herself.
"We get the privilege of being in this environment, instead of being in the traditional public school. Everyone's different here. They make you feel like they care about you, and all of the other kids have been really welcoming to me because I've only been here a few weeks," she said. "This gives you hope — and an opportunity to graduate."
Karen Gaddis, counselor to students in their senior year at Memorial High School, said Tulsa could fill an entire high school with kids who need an alternative way to earn their high school diploma.
"Tulsa Public Schools has lots of options. We have TLA, Project 12, Street School, but it's trying to get students into these programs that's the problem because they are continually full and restricted in (enrollment) size," Gaddis said. "It doesn't matter how needy a student is or how desperate their situation is, if (the programs) are full, they can't get in. I think we need a full-size alternative high school — one for students who are having problems getting through the traditional high school setting."
The amount of time required by school is a critical factor for many students who are at a crossroads in deciding whether to stick with school or to drop out, Gaddis explained. "It's fairly easy to talk seniors into an alternative education program because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "The tougher cases are kids who have been in high school for three or four years, but they're still considered freshmen and sophomores. Are they going to stay in school until they're 21? They need to move forward in life, get training and jobs. They're so fed up and so frustrated, and very often their parent is in the same situation."
A 2008 study released by America's Promise Alliance ranked Tulsa as 12th in the nation for highest disparity in graduation rates between its urban and suburban districts.
But Sharolyn Sorrels, director of educational indicators for TPS, said its dropout rates and graduation rates have been significantly impacted by students who drop out multiple times and by student record-keeping challenges.
"The state counts dropouts from Oct. 1 to Sept 30, so if a kid drops out in August or September, they are counted as a dropout for the previous year, then come back after Oct. 1 and drop out again, they count the next year," Sorrels said.
"We have kids that are counted in as many as four or five years because we encourage students who have dropped out to come back and try again."
District officials also have found that a significant number of students who were being counted as dropouts had actually transferred to another high school or begun home-schooling, but their parents never notified school officials about their withdrawal.
"They just quit coming — they move and their contact information is no longer good, and our schools would say, 'Well, we'll just drop them,' or let it happen automatically in the computer system after 10 days. We really don't have the personnel, but we have to hunt them down and get the proper paperwork," Sorrels said.
Tracking down those students has become a higher priority for school office workers in the last year or so.
That extra leg work by high school registrars and counselors appears to be paying off. For 2007-08, TPS reported having a total of just 258 dropouts — a decrease of 500 students from the previous year's total.
Andrea Eger 581-8470
andrea.eger@tulsaworld.com
Read part two of the Decade of Dropouts series
See all the other Tulsa World Databases
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