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Future is Uncertain for at-Risk Students: Alternative Schools in Mesa Battle Dropout Rates, Low Test Scores

Posted on: Sunday, 18 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Jennifer Pinner, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Jun. 18--Students groggily wander to the chain-link front gate of Mesa Vista High School just before 8 a.m. each school day. They pull their pockets inside out and lift up their arms as a security guard waves her metal-detecting wand up and down, side to side across their bodies.

They wear black and white -- no other colors are permitted -- to keep gang colors off their campus on Mesa's west side.

But unlike the uniforms the students wear, their futures and the data used to track them are a wash of gray.

"Some of them don't have a sense of tomorrow -- and at this point, some of them are on their way to being high school dropouts," said Jesse Romero, a firstyear teacher at Boulder Canyon High School, an alternative school in east Mesa.

Boulder Canyon and Mesa Vista are the last stop -- and often the last hope -- for at-risk teens in the Mesa Unified School District.

But for too many students, the schools simply don't work.

Michael Hughes, longtime school board member and executive director of PREHAB of Arizona, said the district needs to take a serious look at these schools. The foundation he represents provides counseling and treatment programs for troubled families and youths, and he's concerned that not enough is being done to balance the behavioral issues and educational needs of each student.

Often it's a combination of factors that lands a student in Mesa Vista or Boulder Canyon: Behavior problems, poor academic performance, fighting or drugs. Some students are given little choice: Go to the alternative school or we will expel you.

And a disproportionate number are minority students.

The original intent of the schools was to help students catch up on school work and correct behavior problems -- then return them to their neighborhood schools.

But this year, more than half of all seniors registered at the schools -- 53 students -- dropped out or transferred, possibly to charter schools or teen help programs, though the district isn't sure exactly what happened to all of them. Joe O'Reilly, executive director of academic achievement support, said the district can't keep track of students who stop attending school and don't respond to letters or calls from the district.

Other statistics paint a dismal picture:

--AIMS test scores are low, with only 40 percent of sophomores meeting reading standards and even fewer meeting math standards, according to 2004-05 school year results, the most recent available. If they don't pass Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards by their senior year, they won't graduate.

--Only about 35 percent of seniors -- 41 of 117 students -- attending the alternative schools graduated this year.

--Hispanic, black and American Indian students are overrepresented in the alternative schools compared to the neighborhood high schools.

For instance, the enrollment at Dobson, Westwood, Mesa, Mountain View, Red Mountain and Skyline high schools combined is about 24 percent Hispanic. Yet the enrollment at Boulder Canyon and Mesa Vista is 39 percent Hispanic.

District officials point out that the difference is not as great when each alternative school is compared only to the neighborhood schools that primarily feed into it. For example, at Boulder Canyon, which mostly receives students from Skyline and Red Mountain, Hispanic students make up 30 percent of the enrollment -- compared to 19.3 percent at Skyline and Red Mountain.

Cliff Moon, diversity specialist for the district, said the trend of high minority populations in such schools is not uncommon, especially when compared to alternative schools across the nation.

"We should take a look at why is that happening, what's going on and what can we do to help students be successful," Moon said.

Often, teachers are "unconsciously transmitting certain stereotypes to students and then the students are receptive to those," Moon said. "Sometimes in order to defeat the stereotype, the student may overstudy ineffectively . . . or in the extreme . . . simply drop out of school."

Last week, the Mesa school board met to discuss ways to improve Mesa Vista and Boulder Canyon, as well as the district's two alternative middle schools, McKellips and Power. Ideas include changing the names of the schools and reducing school weeks to four days instead of five to give students more flexibility. The schools also would offer students career training in areas such as the medical field.

But during the hourlong meeting, no mention was made of the issue of minority students.

Moon said the district has held in-service days for teachers to address cultural diversity and help them understand different cultural learning styles. For instance, most schools are competitive in nature with each student working toward his or her own achievement. This runs counter to American Indian culture in which people work toward the betterment of the entire group, Moon said.

Camron Perez, a senior at Mesa Vista High School, had attended the school since early in his sophomore year. The 18-year-old recalled being at Westwood High School a mere two weeks before he was caught selling marijuana and sent to Mesa Vista.

"I thought school was for suckers. Half the stuff we do is not going to help us in the future," Perez said.

Not only is his attitude about learning common in the district's alternative schools, Perez also represents a growing statistic there. The Hispanic population in the schools continues to rise each year. Last year, 44 percent of Mesa Vista's student population was Hispanic. This year the number climbed to 46 percent.

Boulder Canyon has seen a similar trend. Last year, Hispanics accounted for about 23 percent of its population; now the number is 30 percent.

The statistics trouble Napoleon Pisano, education chairman of the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens.

"There's a lot of concern that many community members have expressed to us of the overrepresentation in the alternative schools," Pisano said. "The academic gap between Hispanic minorities and nonminorities suggests to me that we have systemic problems in how we educate our population."

For most students at the alternative schools, difficult family situations, drugs, gangs and poverty play key roles in the attitudes and academic circumstances they find themselves in.

Seventy-five percent of Mesa Vista's students come from homes with incomes low enough to qualify for the federal free and reducedprice lunch program, and most come from single parent homes. In some cases, their parents, brothers, sisters and friends never made it to high school graduation.

Regardless of their circumstances, public educators are under more pressure than ever before to ensure that they succeed in school. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to make sure all students can meet academic standards.

Associate superintendent Michael Cowan said the Mesa district is going to create after-school catch-up courses next school year at each neighborhood school to help struggling students improve and stay out of Mesa Vista and Boulder Canyon. Meanwhile the alternative schools could see more computer-based programs to help with instruction.

Moon said providing the students with counseling also is especially helpful.

But balancing the treatment of behavioral problems while still maintaining academic rigor in the curriculum is one of the biggest challenges teachers and principals face at the alternative schools.

They find themselves trying to help students, who are sometimes three to five years behind in their course work, get caught up. They compete with difficult family situations, drugs, gangs and poverty for the students' attention.

The challenges are so great at Mesa Vista that it's the only school in the district to have a gang counselor and a social worker. Principal Pat Siner says "typically those people are pretty swamped."

And Romero recognizes there is only so much the school can do.

"You're not going to be able to save them all," he said.

Compounding the challenges is AIMS -- a high school exam that became a graduation requirement starting this spring. Joe Thomas, a teacher at Mesa Vista for more than 10 years, said the focus at the alternative schools has shifted from one of creating "productive citizens" to passing AIMS.

"That's only one predictor of what students can do on that day," Thomas said.

A multiple-choice test doesn't reveal other kinds of progress that Thomas sees in his students: Growth in their self-respect and their respect for others.

"Those are the kinds of students we're producing," he said.

Graduation rates at Mesa's alternative high schools are low, with less than half of all seniors who registered at the beginning of the school year earning diplomas this spring, according to data provided by school registrars.

At Boulder Canyon, 15 of 48 seniors completed their requirements at the alternative school and then graduated from their neighborhood school, while a handful returned to their neighborhood high school, and the rest either dropped out or transferred out of the district. Mesa Vista had similar numbers with 24 of 69 students graduating and the rest either dropping out or transferring.

The graduation data is fuzzy because no one tracks the alternative school students who return to their neighborhood school before completing graduation requirements.

David Shuff, director of prevention programs, said students who enter the alternative schools "usually don't stay there. They get their act together," and return to their high school.

But principals at Boulder Canyon and Mesa Vista acknowledged that only a handful of students ever return to neighborhood high schools -- some because they are never ready to return, and others because they prefer the smaller alternative programs.

While Perez never returned to Westwood's classrooms, he did successfully complete his graduation requirements in December at Mesa Vista.

In May, he walked with his former classmates at the Westwood graduation and accepted his diploma.

"Finally I did it," he said, giving much of the credit to his mother, who kept pushing him to get through school. "I never thought I was going to graduate."

Perez is trying out for Mesa Community College's football team this summer and wants to eventually continue his education at Arizona State University. He would like to major in business and someday, open his own shoe store.

Meanwhile, at least 10 of his classmates who failed to graduate are expected to return to Mesa Vista next fall to try once again to complete their classes, pass AIMS and get a diploma. They will still have to wear black and white. They will continue to pass through the chain link fence and the metal detector.

"This is a crossroads: If you want to turn your life around, this is the place to do it," principal Siner said. "It's the turning point for some . . . but the end of the road for others."

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CONTACT WRITER: (480) 898-5640

or jpinner@aztrib.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Tribune

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