Too many North Carolinians drop out of school.
The Center originally published research findings and recommendations on ways to prevent and reduce high school dropouts in 2007. In 2008, we testified before the Joint Legislative Commission on Dropout Prevention and High School Graduation Rates about better ways to count and prevent high school dropouts. Both the legislature and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction took actions in three consecutive years in response to the Center’s recommendations.
The Center’s research on dropouts has led to…
- $13 million in state-funded dropout prevention grants,
- a study to raise the compulsory school attendance age,
- and, most importantly, the statewide dropout rate has declined to 4.97 percent, and the graduation rate has increased to 71.7 percent.
This is Marcus Powell: Former High School Dropout
Marcus Powell has endured. Once a three- time dropout, he is now a Dean’s list student and college ambassador at Craven Community College. He first dropped out as a freshman at New Bern High School. “I liked to learn and going to school, but I just didn’t have any concept of the value of education. I was doing everything I shouldn’t be doing at that age, and I really did not understand that those decisions could affect my life.”
Wanting to make money, Marcus began working as a bag boy at the local Winn-Dixie and enrolled in the Basic Skills program at Craven Community College to obtain his GED. “That would have worked out,” he says, “but transportation be-came the issue — riding a bike, having to catch rides — in high school, I could ride the bus.”
Eventually, he went back to New Bern High School as an 18-year-old freshman, but when an injury significantly limited his mobility, it zapped his motivation again, and he dropped out of the education scene for a third time. Eventually, he ended up at the neighborhood Community Resource Center located in a house once occu- pied by a local drug dealer, where the services provided include occasional community col- lege classes. There, a counselor talked to him about the Job Corps, a message he was receptive to since his mother was a Job Corps graduate. Within a week, he was on a plane to Washington, D.C. to a Job Corps program. “It was the best experience I could ever have,” he says. “I would not trade it for anything in the world. It really opened my eyes.”
He returned to New Bern with a GED and an accounting diploma, but found himself in a public housing apartment and working as many as three jobs at one time. After a period of time, he met the sister of his girlfriend who was a graduate of Lenoir Community College, and he marveled at the success she seemed to have found in life. After talking about it, both he and his girlfriend enrolled at Craven Community College.
The developmental courses were his lifeline, and he particularly appreciated the learning commu- nities that prompted a unique engagement with his studies. Learning communities encourage stu- dents to approach learning from a “shared rather than isolated” experience. Students enroll together as a group in several courses threaded by a com- mon theme. Instructors function as a team and ensure that the content in one course is related to the content in another and help students make con- nections throughout. Students in a learning com- munity collaborate in small groups or teams to solve problems, study, or develop class projects
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“I missed a lot in high school,” Marcus says. “I had to make up for things and catch up to where I needed to be.”
With the taste of academic success now under his belt, Marcus envisions transferring to a university in the University of North Carolina system. “Looking forward is so much different for me now,” he says. “I am now on a positive track. I can see myself on Wall Street one day, or maybe a lawyer, but I definitely see myself as very edu- cated and helping others. I see myself making an impact on this country and the world. It is becoming more and more true every day, and last year I made the Dean’s List. I am very blessed, grateful, and thankful.”
As the Center recommended, the General Assembly appropriated $7 million for dropout prevention grants in 2007 and $15 million in 2008. In 2009, it appropriated $13 million in dropout prevention grants, as we recommended, despite a record $4.5 billion state budget shortfall. The legislature also acted on our recommendation to evaluate what works in these grants. And, it mandated a new study we recommended on whether increasing the compulsory school attendance age would reduce dropouts. At our urging, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction is now using a more accurate method of counting dropout rates. Most importantly, the dropout rate in North Carolina has declined from 5.24% in 2007 to 4.97% in 2008, with 1,116 fewer dropouts. Each dropout costs the state about $260,000 over the course of his or her lifetime. The Center’s work to reduce the number of dropouts is important because of students like Marcus Powell.
Click Here to Download a Profile of Marcus (pdf)
