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New Dropouts Test Adult Education GED-Prep Programs Struggle With Maturity Gap

Posted on: Monday, 18 July 2005, 15:01 CDT

Professional educators who teach adults in Louisiana say they are having a tough time handling the school dropouts washing up at their centers.

Adult-education centers are starting to see more teenage students, who are less mature and less academically prepared than the students of years past, educators are saying at conferences and, increasingly, in public.

State officials dispute such a contention, armed with statistics showing dropout rates have declined along with the number of teenagers enrolling in adult education.

Dropping out before graduating from high school has long been commonplace in Louisiana. About 600,000 working-age adults lack a traditional high-school diploma or a high-school equivalency diploma, which can be obtained by passing the General Educational Development tests devised by the American Council on Education.

Of those 600,000 adults, only about 5 percent enroll in adult- education classes each year and only about 1 percent earn an equivalency diploma.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration is gathering recommendations from a series of task forces, including one dealing with adult education. From these, her staff is planning a package of proposals aiming to ensure that more young people, both in school and out, can meet the standards required by today's employers.

What is not getting enough attention, according to directors of several adult-education centers in the state, is the difficulty of teaching today's dropouts.

"We've had to address discipline issues that we've never had to address before," said Shirley Lachmann, director of community centers for Catholic Charities in New Orleans.

Some, but not all, of these adult educators blame Louisiana's accountability tests, particularly the eighth-grade LEAP test, for the situation. They argue that the pressures of the tests such as the Louisiana Education Assessment Program lead some educators to push their worst students out of school in earlier grades than the grades from which these students used to drop out - a contention state and local educators deny.

"All these 16-year-olds are LEAP babies," said David Jones, director of St. Paul Adult Learning Center in Baton Rouge. "That's what they are, basically."

Debi Faucette, state director of family, career and technical education, which oversees adult education, said she has no evidence that teenage dropouts are a bigger issue now than in the past.

"I think that you may see pockets in some places, but definitely not the state as a whole," said Faucette, whose department is a branch of the state Department of Education. She notes that:n The number of teenagers in training for the GED tests has declined steadily during the past five years.

The average age of adult education students during the past five years increased from 25 to about 28.

The numbers don't persuade Sister Lory Schaff, St. Paul's fiscal officer and one of its founders. She is among the most vocal on this subject, pressing her concerns in several public forums.

"I don't hold too much stock in those statistics," Schaff said. "I think someone at LSU or somewhere should do a graduate study on this issue and see what's really happening."

Schaff said many of today's dropouts are doomed for failure even before they arrive at St. Paul.

"These kids couldn't pass an eighth-grade test. How do you expect them to pass a 12th-grade test?"

Trying something new

Schaff and Sister Kathleen Bahlinger opened St. Paul Adult Learning Center 22 years ago.

Unlike most adult-education centers, St. Paul has retooled to meet its changing enrollment. It now places adults and teenagers ages 16 to 18 into separate programs. The "teen" program, as it's informally known, resembles an alternative high school more than the self-directed learning typical of traditional adult education.

"You can't put in your classroom a 16-year-old and a 40-year-old together; it's not going to work," said Jones, who has been director of the program for three years. "It's like putting oil with water. They immediately start to separate."

In September, the school's teen program attracted about 100 applicants for 20 openings. This fall, it is expanding from 32 teenagers to 48 teenagers, thanks to a grant from the Huey and Angelina Wilson, and Baton Rouge Area, foundations.

Adult educators across the state said that few, if any, programs are changing so extensively. Most, they say, continue the traditional model, where students follow individual plans, occasionally asking for help.

Faucette said the state requires adult education programs to do more than the traditional, namely provide daily teaching sessions to small groups.

"Nobody is supposed to be on their own, asking for help when they need it," she said. "That's the bottom line."

Other adult educators say they would like to provide more programs similar to St. Paul's, but their facilities don't have the space.

George Varino, director of adult education for East Baton Rouge Parish, said his program continues to focus on adults, but acknowledged that some younger students need more "spoon-feeding."

The big problem, he said, is his centers are typically in one large room with little space to hold separate classes without disturbing others.

To address that, he said, the school system is allowing him to use the former campus of Mayfair Elementary. He plans to use its separate classrooms to expand the small-group work sessions the state wants.

"If we can get kids in the program, and they stay and they attend, we can help them," he said. "The problem we've had is keeping their attendance up."

The pre-GED effect

The decline of Louisiana's teenage adult education population runs counter to national trends, which have shown a steady increase during the past three decades in the number and percentage of teenagers seeking their equivalency diplomas.

Part of the reason, Faucette said, is that many of Louisiana's at- risk teenagers are heading to a new service, a 3-year-old school- system-run GED preparatory program.

Called pre-GED/Skills Option, it has almost doubled since it began in fall 2002 and now takes in more than 7,500 teenagers statewide - almost as many teenagers as in adult GED prep programs.

Here, students who repeatedly fail the eighth-grade LEAP test spend half their time preparing for the GED Tests and the other half preparing for the working world. School systems continue to receive state money for these students, and the students are not considered dropouts as long as they remain in the program.

One big difference between the pre-GED program and traditional adult education is money: The state pays school systems about $3,000 per pre-GED student a year but pays providers of adult education only about $400 per student.

Faucette notes that pre-GED students are different from traditional dropouts because they are still enrolled in school, are expected to attend every day and have the option of returning to a regular high-school graduation track. She said the pre-GED program succeeds with some students, but acknowledged that for some it's just delaying when they drop out.

Also affecting the dropout pool are changes in Louisiana's compulsory attendance law. Before 2001, a 16-year-old could drop out of school without anyone's permission. That year, the Legislature increased the dropout age to 17. In 2002, the Legislature changed the law, allowing 16-year-olds to drop out only if they had the permission of their parents and their school system, and if they enrolled directly in adult education.

Faucette said the combination of the pre-GED program and compulsory attendance rules probably accounts for the decline in teenage enrollment in adult education.

Other trends

While state statistics generally support Faucette's argument, some point in the opposite direction:

In 1998, the average student entering a GED-prep program in Louisiana had, on average, the skills of an eighth-grader. By 2004, the average students entered with the skills of a sixth-grader.

Since 1999, white enrollment in adult education programs decreased by 28 percent, while black enrollment is almost exactly the same as it was in 1999 - a trend Faucette could not explain.

The number of students who spent fewer than 12 hours a year in an adult education program - the minimum number of hours required for federal record-keeping - grew from 8,600 in 2000 to 14,300 in 2004.

In 1999, about 17 percent of the students who stayed more than 12 hours ended up quitting. In 2004, almost 38 percent of them quit.

Faucette said she has not looked closely at these trends but has a few observations:n The decline in entering-skill levels might reflect more extensive recruiting of lower-skilled dropouts.

Students staying in adult education programs no more than 12 hours often have much more modest goals than those seeking an equivalency diploma - learning to read the Bible, helping with their children's homework - and consequently need only a few hours of help.

The increase in those who quit after spending more than 12 hours in adult education may reflect changes in how centers keep their rolls. Since 2000, federal rules require that students who don't show up for 90 days must be immediately dropped.

The role of accountability

School accountability is, in part, meant to end the practice of social promotion, by which students advance to the next grade level because of their age, not because they've mastered the requisite skills.

While high-stakes tests are the new gatekeepers in Louisiana, fears that do-or-die tests would lead to more dropouts have not as yet been borne out.

Between 1998-99 and 2003-2004, state dropout rates have declined overall, increasing only in eighth-grade and then only slightly. Ninth and 12th-grade rates inched back up since bottoming out in 2001-2002. In middle school, about 3,000 to 3,500 seventh- and eighth-graders statewide are dropping out every year.

During the same time span, the percentage of students retained in eighth grade increased.

In 1998-99, the year before the Louisiana tests determined grade promotions, 6.6 percent of the eighth-grade statewide repeated the grade.

In 2003-2004, 18 percent of the class repeated.

Urban and poor rural school districts have even more repeaters. For instance, during that five-year span, retention rates in East Baton Rouge Parish public schools more than quadrupled. One-third of the district's eighth-graders now repeat that grade.

Education research has long cautioned that students held back in the same grade because of the decisions of their teachers are more likely to drop out. The research is less useful when it's a test, not a teacher, holding a student back.

Some of the most extensive research has been done in Chicago. The Consortium on Chicago School Research has published a series of studies titled "Ending Social Promotion." The consortium examined that city's work to combat social promotion since it first instituted high-stakes testing in 1996. The city now gives promotional tests, what the researchers call "promotion gates," in third, sixth and eighth grades.

A 2004 study tried to gauge the effect on dropout rates of Chicago's eighth-grade test.

Researcher Elaine Allensworth was open to two possibilities:n High-stakes tests would increase dropout rates by prompting low- achieving students to drop out earlier and in greater numbers, forming what Allensworth calls a "promotion gate," blocking students from advancing.

High-stakes tests would prompt more students to rise to the occasion and actually lower dropout rates.

What she found was a little of both.

"Retention at the promotion gate increased low-achieving students' likelihood of dropping out," Allensworth writes.

At the same time, a slight decline in dropout rates among the majority of students held back balanced things out, so that overall dropout rates in Chicago changed little, she writes.

Higher stakes coming

Louisiana may prove different from Chicago if only because Louisiana is holding more students back.

At its height in 1998, the Chicago public school system held back only 11 percent of its eighth grade. In 2003-2004, Louisiana public schools collectively held back 18 percent of their eighth grade.

This year, Louisiana will apply to eighth-graders a higher promotional standard first used with fourth-graders in spring 2004.

Thirty-four percent of the fourth-graders failed initially. After summer retests, and some administrative promotions, only half that many, about 17 percent, had to repeat the grade.

Eighth-graders, however, are less successful on retests, with typically only three or four out of 10 passing.

Herman Brister, assistant superintendent overseeing middle schools in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, suggests the state hold off for two years at least before applying the higher promotion standard to the eighth grade.

He argues that by then, the fourth-graders tested in 2004 will reach eighth grade. "Then we have a chance at the fight," he said.

Already, Brister has a lot of students too old for their grade by two years or more - almost one out of every four middle school students in the system. He has started new programs and expanded existing ones to deal with the growing tide.

Ninth grade, usually the grade where students start falling behind in earning credits toward graduation, isn't much better than eighth grade. Almost as many students statewide repeat that grade as repeat eighth.

To get a better fix on its dropout picture, the state followed 1999's ninth-graders to their graduations in 2003. Only 54 percent of them finished on time. Fifteen percent were still in school but hadn't yet graduated, or they had transferred to private schools or moved out of state. The remaining 31 percent dropped out.

New rules to stop cheating

Under the state's accountability rules, schools are rated by academic performance and other factors. Schools can earn rewards or face penalties, depending on how well their students perform.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is trying to eliminate any incentives schools have to cheat by encouraging low- achieving students to drop out.

Specifically, BESE is reworking its school-rating formula so schools get fewer points for students passing tests and more points for the students they manage to keep in school, and even students lured to return.

"Under the new accountability rules, it won't do any good to push people out," said Linda Johnson, one of two Baton Rouge-area representatives on the state board.

BESE's proposed changes, however, apply only to high schools. Middle schools, which adult educators say is the source of a growing number of equivalency diploma seekers, will continue using the old formula.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

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