About Alabama — Reducing Alabama’s High School Dropout Rate

Those who drop out of high school before completing their diploma pay a terrible price in terms of lost earnings and limited opportunities for meaningful employment. The Census Bureau’s most recent figures show that on average, dropouts earn 33 percent less than high school graduates and 63 percent less than people with bachelor’s degrees.

High levels of dropouts also are costly to a state’s economy since they limit the attractiveness of the state to potential employers who are looking for skilled workers. About 20 percent of Alabamians above age 24 have no high school diploma, according to the Census Bureau, ranking us among the six highest states.

Reducing Alabama’s high school dropout rate is thus one of the most important ways to improve the well-being of the state and its people. It is a task that should be at the top of the priority list for Alabama’s public school systems.

Recently the Mobile County Public Schools asked the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama to analyze the common traits distinguishing the school system’s dropouts from its graduates in order to help it develop preventive programs that will keep more students in school until they graduate.

The study followed more than 4,500 students through their school careers. It found three common factors associated with dropping out of school:

First, absenteeism — 84 percent of students who missed three or fewer days in the ninth grade went on to graduate, but only 30 percent of students who missed 17 days or more in the ninth grade did so.

Second, behavior problems — 77 percent of students who had no out-of-school suspensions in ninth grade went on to graduate, but only 22 percent of students with eight or more suspensions did so.

Third, class failure — 63 percent of students who did not fail a core class (math, English, science, history) in sixth grade went on to graduate, but only 22 percent of students with multiple failures did so.

None of these factors is surprising, yet no high school in the system was able to graduate more than 62 percent of students in the study who could be identified by poor attendance, behavior or grades. The system is now developing targeted early intervention programs to increase its graduation rate as all school systems should do.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Jim Williams is executive director for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama.