Delaware student dropout rate fell to a 30-year low during the 2012-13 academic year, according to a Delaware Department of Education report released Thursday.
Of students enrolled in grades 9-12, 1,106 dropped out of school, representing 2.9 percent of students. Last year 1,527 students left school, representing 3.9 percent. Four years ago the rate was at 5 percent, said Mark Murphy, Delaware Secretary of Education.
“Not only are we seeing our graduation rates continue to climb, but we are seeing our dropout rates as well continuing to drop and as I noted, the lowest in 30 years,” Murphy said. He also said the reporting process of tracking has improved with school systems having better communication when students transfer from public to private schools, start home schooling, or leave the state.
“These numbers are real and valid numbers,” he said. “We are not missing students.”
Geographically, New Castle County had the highest dropout rate among the state's three counties at 3 percent. Kent County had a 2.9 percent rate and Sussex a 2.4 percent rate.
The report did not break dropout rates into municipalities, but Murphy said it could track students by zip code and will do that, particularly to look at urban areas like Wilmington. He did say, however, that Wilmington dropout rates were in the single digits.
Terri Quinn Gray, president of the Delaware State Board of Education, said though she was happy to see the shrinking number of high school dropouts, there were still questions from people in the community about the kids in their neighborhood.
“People don’t ‘feel’ 2.9 percent, they just know about the kids on their block,” Gray said. “We need to have a sense of urgency around these numbers, even with great progress.”
The state’s report shows black students made up the largest percentage of drop-outs - 44.8 percent. 42.5 percent were white and 12.7 percent Hispanic.
Nationally, students tend to dropout in the senior year of high school, said Challis Breithaupt, education associate for supports and interventions for the Delaware Department of Education. In Delaware, however, the most students begin to encounter problems in freshman year.
“What we know, of kids who fall off track, the vast majority fall behind in ninth grade,” Murphy said.
He says many schools have moved to address that problem; specifically pointing to those with ninth grade academies that draw incoming ninth graders in over the summer before they begin to get them acclimated to their new surroundings. Schools like Caesar Rodney High School and Christiana High School have ninth grade academies.
Murphy also lauded successful programs at Dover High School where the dropout rate fell from 3.8 percent a year ago to 1.6 percent in this year’s report. Their programs include the Daylight credit recovery program that allows students behind on credits catch up. Last year that program saw 31 of 33 students enrolled graduated with their class.
“I honestly think we saved some students last year [in the program’s first year] and I’m proud of that,” said Evelyn Edney, Dover High’s co-principal for administration. “We were able to keep hope in them and they were able to shine.”
“Dover High is a great example of a school that has put a significant emphasis on educators supporting kids and theye are seeing the fruits of that labor,” said Murphy.
Graduation rates were also in the report. Last school year, 8190 students graduated, 79.9 percent of the four-year cohort studied, up less than half a percent from 79.6 in the 2011-12 academic year. The state fell short of its federal target of 82 percent.
The cohort in the statistic are students who entered ninth grade for the first time in fall 2009.
There was no comparison to national graduation rates as those studies are years behind, Breithaupt said. The most recent national rates available are from 2010, she said.
Board members asked DDOE officials if there were ways to make graduation and dropout rates more equitable, in order to find out what happens to students who don’t seem to fall into either report, like those with Individualized Education Program that may call for a five-year plan to graduation, or those held back a year for any reason.
“We could come back to you with some methodology,” Murphy said to find out where those students are who aren’t making it into the graduation rates, if they’ve continued school, earned GEDs, etc.