CPS Disputes Report Findings

By Emily Zeugner

Cincinnati Public Schools officials are disputing findings of a national report that cited seven city high schools as so-called “dropout factories.”

The seven were among about 70 across the state cited in a Johns Hopkins University analysis of education data as having 40 percent or more of the students who started out as freshmen dropping out before graduation

The data tracked senior classes for three years: 2004, 2005 and 2006.

The highest concentration of “dropout factories” is in the state’s large cities, including 14 of 17 high schools in the Columbus district, seven of 17 in Cincinnati, seven of 16 in Cleveland and six of seven in Toledo. Many have high proportions of minority students and students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Students in these schools face extra challenges to remain in school and graduate.

Cincinnati Public Schools disputed the report’s findings, noting that four of the seven schools in the district listed with excessive dropouts no longer exist. They were restructured after the district decided in 2001 to replace some of its larger, traditional schools with smaller, more specialized schools to better address students’ interest.

Thus, Aiken Traditional has become Aiken College and Career High School and Aiken University; Western Hills Traditional has become Western Hills Design Tech and Western Hills University; Withrow Traditional has become Withrow International and Withrow University; and Woodward Traditional has become Woodrow Career Technical School.

Four of the new schools had graduation rates above 90 percent, CPS said, and Western Hills Design Tech stood at nearly 69 percent for 2005-06, the last year for which figures were available.

The district said graduation rates for Aiken University and Woodward Career Technical were not available.

Moreover, the district noted, the Johns Hopkins data did not correlate with statistics issued by the Ohio Department of Education, even for schools that had closed.

Unlike the Johns Hopkins analysis, Ohio uses a different method of tracking retention in public high schools, said Karla Carruthers, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

The data submitted to the state by individual school districts tracks kids through a “cohort” system that accounts for some mobility among students, such as students moving to another district or a nonpublic high school within the same district, she said.

To increase the accuracy of the data, Ohio is moving to a system that tracks individual students through an identification number, she said. The first figures from data recorded in that way will be available next year.

Originally published by Associated Press.

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