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Sunday, August 30, 2009
Where Did They Go?
By Martin Salazar And Andrea Schoellkopf
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writers
They began their high school journey in the waning days of summer 2004 — 29,952 freshmen embarking on their final stretch toward graduation day.
But the "Pomp and Circumstance" never played for roughly nine out of every 20 students in that class, at least not on what should have been their graduation days.
What happened to the 13,781 students who didn't graduate with their class in 2008?
It's a tough question to answer, given federal privacy laws and the fact that high schools and the state Public Education Department have yet to find a way to fully track all of the students.
But a Journal analysis has yielded a rough sketch of how the students got lost in the state's graduation pipeline.
Many simply dropped out. Others needed more than four years to earn their diploma. A few opted to get a general equivalency diploma. Another small portion met all high school graduation requirements but failed to pass the required New Mexico High School Competency Exam. Others appear to have simply vanished.
And while the class of 2008 is in the spotlight now because it's the first for which the state has released a four-year graduation rate, the heartache of not completing high school spills beyond the ranks of that class.
Lauren K. Padilla dropped out of Los Lunas High School as a 15-year-old six years ago, spent the next few years partying and then realized her mistake when she saw her classmates graduate.
"I wished I was there," said Padilla, now 21. "I knew when I was supposed to be called and wasn't."
Now, she's married with a 2-year-old daughter and isn't sure when she'll find the time to get her GED. She tried once, but failed by three points.
"Of course I want to go to college and get a degree and make a life for me and my daughter," Padilla said. "Right now, I have to work to support her."
To be sure, there are students who leave high school without a diploma and go on to highly successful careers.
The chief academic officer of the state's flagship university, for example, is a high school dropout who went on to earn multiple college degrees.
Suzanne Ortega, UNM's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, got married young, had kids and earned her adult educational equivalency diploma so that she could pursue her education at a junior college. She eventually earned her doctorate in sociology.
But she is the exception. The number of non-high school graduates who go on to higher education is minuscule. At UNM, for instance, only 41 of the 3,225 new freshmen who enrolled in the fall of 2008 were GED students. That's about 1.3 percent.
The state's dismal 54 percent graduation rate has prompted Gov. Bill Richardson to launch a new series of initiatives aimed at boosting the number and reducing dropouts. One initiative calls for getting 10,000 dropouts back in school by May 2011.
Class breakdown
The Journal's analysis of what happened to those who didn't graduate with their class in 2008 is not scientific and required piecing together information from state and national reports.
There were 29,952 students included in the class of 2008 cohort. The state tracked those individual students from ninth grade through the summer after their senior year to determine how many graduated. That figure excludes students who transferred to a private or out-of-state school, were home-schooled or died. Of those in the cohort, 16,171, or 54 percent, graduated within four years. The other 13,781, or 46 percent did not.
So, where are the biggest leaks in New Mexico's graduation pipeline? Of the students who did not graduate:
• 5,103 or 37 percent are considered dropouts by the Public Education Department, meaning they didn't get their GEDs or stay in high school.
• 2,994, or 21.7 percent, needed more time and remained in school for a fifth year, according to the state.
• GED statistics compiled nationally show that 2,164 New Mexico teens in the same age group as those in the class of 2008 obtained their GEDs between 2006 and 2008. That could help account for up to 15.7 percent of the students in the class who didn't graduate.
• 739 students, or 5.4 percent, completed all their course work but failed to pass the required state test to get their diplomas. Those students received certificates of completion, but are not considered graduates, according to the state.
• It's unclear what happened to the remaining 2,781 students, or 20.2 percent of the nongraduates.
Cindy Gregory, the state education department's chief statistician, said the data system used to track the Class of 2008 didn't capture all the information needed to present a comprehensive picture of students who didn't graduate.
"There were a fair number of kids for whom the outcome was unknown," she said. "We call it 'status unknown.' That means the student vanished, and the school didn't have any transcript request or any documentation on file that would let them know for sure what happened to the student."
The state has since retooled its system to capture more information and is working with the higher education department on a system that can track students from pre-kindergarten through university graduate work.
Behind the statistics
While the figures provide insight into how New Mexico is losing students, they don't tell the human side of the story.
Statistics don't reveal, for example, the tipping points that made many students decide a high school diploma wasn't worth the effort. They don't tell us how many students left to join the workforce or how many left to care for younger siblings or for their own children. We don't know how many simply got lost in the high school maze.
Padilla, the Los Lunas High student who dropped out at 15, said smaller classes might have helped her stay in school, but too many of her classmates were leaving.
"At the time, school wasn't the place to be," she said. "The classes were way too long. Teachers didn't give you enough attention, and they didn't really care."
She said she initially got a job at Dion's Pizza and is now working as a Wal-Mart cashier. She worked at a call center for a while but got frustrated when her attempts to advance in the industry were stifled by her lack of a high school diploma.
Jason Baca, 20, was kicked out of Albuquerque High in 2004, spent a year at a charter school and then dropped out. He thought his $300 a week salary working at a fast food restaurant would be enough to live on. After rent and bills, it wasn't.
"I'd wake up, sleep through half the day, get ready to go to work, come home and sleep," Baca said. "It was the same routine, going on for a couple months, and I realized it wasn't the life for me and I needed to go back to school."
While some students feel teachers don't care about them, Viola Florez, a former public school teacher who went on to a long stint as dean of the University of New Mexico's College of Education, said she doesn't believe that to be the case.
"Most teachers are dedicated, they want all students to succeed, and they do their very best," Florez said. She said sometimes conditions in the schools — like overcrowded classrooms and broken air conditioners — make it difficult.
Florez said she also thinks support from family is crucial in keeping students in school.
"When students are in this large high school, they can get lost in the system," said Florez, who is now at the forefront of UNM's efforts to help the state bolster its public education system.
"Some students need more support than others," Florez said. "In my research, I have found out in interviewing students that those that did drop out, they really just kind of felt like no one was really there — that they were just like a number, that nobody even knew if they came to school or didn't."
New Mexico Education Secretary Veronica Garcia said the state's cohort graduation rate makes it clear that educators have to do a better job of counseling, retaining and reaching out to students. The low graduation rate, she said, is something the entire state should be concerned about.
"You're talking about future earning potential; you're talking about quality of life issues; you're even talking about longevity," she said.
"If you're living a life of poverty, it impacts so many areas and it impacts the quality of life of all New Mexicans if we have a poor economy," Garcia added. "It is crucial that these kids graduate and actually have at least one year of (college) under their belt."
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