CAPE SCHOOLS TARGET AT-RISK STUDENTS

About 18 percent of the students now enrolled in the Cape Girardeau Public Schools will never earn their diplomas.

While this local statistic is better than state and national averages, a committee of public school educators says it's not good enough.

An At-Risk Committee, studying the problem of students dropping out of school and ways to address it, submitted its interim report to the Cape Girardeau Board of Education Tuesday.

The school board plans to study the committee's findings at a special meeting later this year.

Nationwide, 29 percent of students don't complete their high school education; statewide the figure is 24 percent.

Jim Watkins, co-chairman of the committee said: "Our statistics look good compared to the state and nation. But is 18 percent something we are willing to be satisfied with?"

Watkins said, "Even though our percentages are lower that the state and national averages, we are still interested in these kids.

"Somewhere the needs of the students who drop out are not being met.

"It's not beneficial to the community from an economic viewpoint as well as to the individual to do less than what society expects them to do, which is a high school diploma or a GED."

One of the first tasks for the committee was to gather local statistics. Raw numbers weren't enough, Watkins said.

The committee developed a form for students leaving school, asking why they decided to leave and surveying whether the students met some of the other warning signs for dropping out.

The school district began keeping detailed dropout information this year.

The committee found that eight students dropped out at the junior-high level and 104 students dropped out at the senior-high level, for a total of 112.

Fifteen of these students dropped out twice. The actual number of students who dropped out this year is 97, but each time a student re-enrolls then drops out again, he is counted again as a dropout.

Four junior high students said they didn't like school, three said they would go to work and one planned to get a GED.

Most high school students dropped out because of non-attendance. The largest drop-out group was males in the 10th grade. Twenty of those students quit school.

High school students also listed getting a GED, dislike of school, work, medical and personal reasons. Two students were suspended for a semester.

The committee has made some short-range recommendations for the district to address students at risk of dropping out.

The recommendations call for educational and awareness efforts at all different levels from school administrators and teachers to parents and community members.

Watkins said that nationwide 1 million students drop out of school each year and that dropouts are 2 times more likely than high school graduates to be unemployed. Up to 80 percent of some prison populations are high school dropouts.

Watkins said, "Drop-out tendencies can be assessed as early as third grade."

The strongest predictor of dropping out is repeating a grade in school, Watkins said. The likelihood of a student dropping out increases by 40 percent to 50 percent if retained in one grade, and increases by 90 percent for those retained in two grades of school.

Other factors may also indicate a student is at-risk of dropping out poor attendance, low standardized test scores, discipline problems and special-program placement.

Other warning signs are a low-income family, a poorly educated mother, a fatherless home, a parent or sibling who dropped out of school, numerous family relocations, and a job involving working more than half the time while in high school.

Watkins said, "The committee plans to continue meeting next year when we will look at programs we have to help at-risk kids and also to look at programs that might help."