Kroger can tell you how much applesauce you buy.
FedEx can tell you how many packages were shipped in April and where your
own package is right now.
General Motors can tell you how many
Blazers were sold in 2001.
Casinos can tell you the amount of money
dumped into a slot machine every 24 hours and the
total amount bet each month in Tunica County down
to the last nickel.
But try finding out how many students are
graduating next week from the 28 high schools in the
Memphis City Schools and you’re out of luck.
Tracking teenagers, it seems, is a lot harder than tracking
packages, groceries, SUVs, and gambling dollars.
Roughly 5,000 students will graduate this
month from MCS high schools. Thousands more have dropped out, moved out, or flunked out over the
last four years. And hundreds more are “on the
bubble,” depending on how well they perform on their final
exams this week. And that is about the most specific
information that can be gleaned for now from a number
of different sources at the school system’s central office.
It seems that public schools do a better job
keeping track of failure than success. You can find the
dropout rate and the number of expulsions and
suspensions on the annual report card. But not the
number of graduates, or finished products, if you will.
While everyone from mayors to school boards
to councilmen to commissioners is busy reforming
public education in Memphis, and before the do-or-die
Gateway graduation tests kick in in a couple of years,
could we please get a head count from each high school
of how many people actually made it to the finish
line for, let’s say, the last four years? Then make that
information readily accessible and publicize it so
taxpayers can have another indication, for better or
worse, of return on their investment.
Graduation numbers are at least as important
as all those TCAP scores, SAT averages, dropout rates,
and millions of dollars spent on new buildings and
daily operations. A simple ratio of teachers and staff to
graduates at each high school would be revealing and useful.
I would bet that at some low-performing high schools
with declining enrollment it is close to one-to-one.
I say that because I was surprised to learn from
my son, a White Station High School graduate-to-be,
that only 350 or so of his freshman classmates from four
years ago will be picking up diplomas next Tuesday night.
His freshman class had well over 500 students, according
to Memphis Board of Education commissioner Barbara Prescott, who is also the parent of a 2002 WSHS grad.
If there is that much attrition at White Station, a
large optional school with a high percentage of college-bound
students and several National Merit Scholars, what’s going
on at other schools in Memphis and Shelby County?
No one is sure. I posed the question to
Prescott, the MCS communications staff, and two people
in the research and accountability office and got
roughly the same answer every time. The graduation rate
is not simply the inverse of the dropout rate, which
is over 30 percent in MCS and can be measured
different ways. A dropout is easy to lose track of, but
a graduate is a graduate. Counting them, and
keeping a year-over-year total, should be relatively simple.
“I don’t think anyone in Tennessee does it,”
said Bill White of the MCS office of accountability.
Dr. Wanda Winnette, principal at White
Station High School, said the school had 440 graduates
last year and has never had under 400 in the eight
years she has been there. But this year she estimates
the final total will be between 325 and 380.
“We’ve kind of been losing more than usual
along the way,” she said.
She suspects a number of factors are involved.
The optional school lost more than usual, suggesting
that college-bound students opted out for easier schools or
private schools. (White Station has both an optional and
traditional program.) If those students don’t live inside the WSHS
district and leave before senior year, they have to transfer to
other schools. Approximately 40 students in the traditional
program are on the bubble until they pass exams. In those cases,
said Winnette, “It’s directly related to attendance.”
While more students are failing to graduate from
WSHS, the ones who are graduating are being offered more
scholarship dollars than ever, Winnette said, with several four-year
packages worth over $100,000.
Memphis City Schools offers four kinds of diplomas. In
addition to the regular diploma earned by the majority of
students, there is an honors diploma, special-education
diploma, and a certificate of attendance for students who don’t meet
the requirements for graduation.
Last year, there was a well-publicized controversy
over whether a handful of students at a couple of
schools should have been allowed to march if they only
received a certificate of attendance. There will doubtless be
similar stories next week, but the real crunch will come
in three years when the Class of 2005 has to pass
state-mandated Gateway exams in English, math, and biology
in order to graduate. State board of education
member Avron Fogelman of Memphis has predicted that
more than half of city school students won’t make it, based
on performance on other standardized tests already in use.
Meanwhile, it would be nice to know as much
about our graduation numbers as our shopping and
gambling habits. Anybody got a student scanner?