The Floridation of Arizona Education: Dropout rates

by David Safier

Arizona Republicans  appear to be hellbent on copying Florida's educational reforms — or those they like, anyway. While they're not keen on cutting the number of students in each class or adding funding for early childhood education — both of which have been done in Florida — they love the idea of holding kids back in the 3rd grade if their reading scores are low.

The problem is, they take the Goldwater Institute's word that holding back 3rd graders has made them dramatically better readers. Yesterday, I wrote about how those increases in reading scores are artificially inflated. Today, I want to look at Florida's abysmal dropout rates.

Florida has a terrible school dropout problem, one of the worst in the country.

The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) puts Florida's graduation rates for 2007 at just under 60%, which is 3.5% lower than Arizona's. Both states are below the national average of about 70%.

A study out of Boston College shows that there is a huge dropoff of Florida students after the 9th grade. Nationally, 90% of 9th graders continue on to 10th grade. In Florida, the number is closer to 75%. The percentages of students going on to the 11th and 12th grades are also well below the national average.

To be fair (because that's the kind of guy I am), dropout and graduation numbers are hard to pin down, because all states report them differently. Also, the 2007 numbers don't reflect any of the students who were held back in the 3rd grade (though some of the other Florida reforms were in place long enough to affect the numbers.) But with that in mind, we need to be very wary of emulating a state whose dropout rates are worse than ours.

In a paper highly critical of Florida's 3rd grade retention program, the author writes this about the relationship between students being held back and dropout rates:

[C]onsiderable research has found that among children who are overage for grade in grade 9 (regardless of whether they were flunked in grade 9 or earlier grades), 65-90% will not persist in high school to graduation.

Holding students back has its potential good points and bad points. On the one hand, it gives students another chance to master basic skills before they move on to the next grade. But on the other hand, retention can increase students' likelihood of dropping out when they realize they have to go to school 13 or even 14 years instead of the usual 12 years.

At this point, we don't know what will happen to the Florida dropout and graduation rates as a consequence of their educational reforms. But it's clear, the rosy picture of Florida's schools painted by Matthew Ladner of G.I. purposely avoids discussing issues like this one that might make the Floridation of Arizona education seem less attractive.