Having just gotten back from the National Conference of State Legislatures Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, I thought I would give everyone a wrap up of some of the things I learned/heard while in the City of Brotherly Love. My reason for going to this year’s meeting was mainly because of a Task Force on Dropout Prevention which I was asked to serve on by NCSL. They are paying for part of my expenses for each of our three meetings over the course of the year. Our first meeting was in January and this was our second meeting. A third will occur in the December for their “fall” forum.

This meeting was very productive on the issue of dropout identification and the presentation by Dr. Robert Balfanz on his report “Grad Nation: A Guidebook to Help Communities Tackle the Dropout Crisis” was simply provoking. A few of the notes I took from this length afternoon meeting:

• We judge a low performing school on graduation rates to be those who graduate only 65% of their students. If they have less than one out of three dropout, then they are “above average.”
• Another concern I have is that we are measuring “high school” dropouts rather than simply “school” dropouts. The 65% figure is based off of incoming enrollment in ninth grade versus a graduation of some type in five years. If they dropout before 9th grade, we don’t measure that.
• We have to look at the social and racial composition of the highest dropout schools. Just looking at the map of the United States and hearing the other members of the task force speak, there is an obvious tie to minority populations having a higher dropout rate.
• We discussed what type of role Law Enforcement should have in addressing this issue. Should it be more truancy patrol? Should it be more involvement in the school? I tend to think that isn’t going to solve the problem in one fell swoop.
• One member suggested that if states would switch from enrollment calculations for monetary payment from the state to a average daily attendance, they would be more concerned about dropouts.
• Another member suggested that we should tie Driver’s License privileges in non-necessity instances to enrollment and attendance in school. I’m concerned on how that would be accomplished and still preserve the rights of homeschooling parents.
• Should we extend virtual learning courses to regular students for making up credits so they won’t lose hope about graduating? Several of them may believe they are too far behind to graduate on time and give up with school completely.

The trip to the GlaxoSmithKline research laboratory was also very informative, including a great presentation on vaccinations and on the benefits of states migrating to a “medical home” for insureds. I’ll try to post more on that part of the trip later.