Welcome

Fortunately, the "I’m a high-school Drop-out (let’s see how many there are on face-book)" [sic] group has only 23 members. Unfortunately, over 19,000 students dropped out of North Carolina high schools during the 2008-09 school year. Are multi-million-dollar state initiatives doing any good?

Bulletin Board

  • The E.A. Morris Fellowship for Emerging Leaders is now accepting applications for the 2010-11 class. Applicants must be between the ages of 25 and 40, reside in North Carolina, and commit to a yearlong program of activities designed to examine, develop, and enhance their leadership skills. There is no cost to individuals accepted into the program. For additional information, please visit the E.A. Morris website at http://www.eamorrisfellows.org.
  • The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/edu_corner for further information.
  • Become a member of JLF’s Freedom Clubs! We have seven regional clubs covering every part of North Carolina, so there is one near you and your like-minded conservative friends. For more information, visit https://www.johnlocke.org/support.

CommenTerry

The General Assembly’s Committee on Dropout Prevention recently awarded over $10.8 million in state funds to 77 schools, districts, and organizations for various dropout prevention initiatives. Former Speaker of the House Rep. Joe Hackney has been a major proponent of the multi-million-dollar grant program, which has had an unimpressive track record since its inception in 2007.

I have written three evaluations of the program (available here, here, and here) and a handful of opinion pieces about the grants, including one that caught the attention of the Committee on Dropout Prevention. According to the minutes for the June 9, 2010 committee meeting,

[President of AT&T and committee member] Cynthia Marshall stated she was approached by the Speaker of the House [Joe Hackney] to respond to an article that appeared in the Charlotte Observer which stated that dropout prevention programs were a "Boon Doggle" [sic] and a waste of time and money and that there should be more emphasis on technical training for students[.] Article was written by Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation and not sure of the articles [sic] angle, but will send a copy of her response to Dave Strahan and Debora Williams.

In the Charlotte Observer op-ed referenced above, I discussed the December 2009 assessment of the first two years of the grant initiative. Consultants with EDSTAR, the company hired to conduct the evaluation of the grants, tried their best to stay positive but discovered a number of serious problems.

For example, there was shoddy record keeping among 2007 and 2008 grant recipients. Some did not even bother to keep detailed records, while others refused to provide information to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. In addition, few schools, districts, or nonprofit organizations endeavored to assess the effectiveness of their approach to dropout prevention. According to researchers, "Some of the programs have documented effectiveness with pre- and post-data." EDSTAR explained, "Many grant recipients reported difficulty obtaining and using data. Even school systems reported data use to be cumbersome, and that they used paper files rather than electronic files."

Students who did not need services received them anyway. Researchers found, "for example, one staff member reported that after writing their SMART Outcomes and obtaining data, they discovered that only one student they were serving with targeted services to reduce suspensions had ever been suspended. As previously discussed, another reported that many of their students were being tutored in math with the goal of passing algebra, when they learned most of the students had already passed algebra."

Follow-up reports in February and May 2010 suggested that record keeping and assessment were improving, with the assistance of EDSTAR, of course. Nevertheless, data collection and analysis among grant recipients continued to be inconsistent. Some schools and organizations appear to be either unwilling or unable to quantify their programs’ ability to retain students and significantly increase the district or school dropout rate. As I wrote in my third evaluation of the grants, programs should not receive additional funding and/or replication based on anecdotal evidence.

I believe that the Republican leadership in the General Assembly will phase out the grant program next year. Make no mistake about it — Republicans share Democrats’ concern for the dropout crisis in North Carolina. Unlike their counterparts on the other side of the aisle, however, most Republicans acknowledge that we still do not fully understand why children in North Carolina drop out of school. Therefore, it is foolish to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on "solutions" to the dropout problem.

Facts and Stats

Dropout Prevention Grants, 2007-2010

2010: $10.8 million (77 grants)
2009: $13 million (83 grants)
2008: $15 million (123 grants)
2007: $7 million (60 grants)

Mailbag

I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].

Education Acronym of the Week

SMART [Outcomes] — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound

Quote of the Week

"Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read."

— Frank Zappa, liner notes from the album "Freak Out!" (1965)