Saturday 20 December 1997 GENERAL PRESS RELEASE From: Leon Todd <leontodd@execpc.com> To: Alan Brown, MPS Superintendent Subject: Algebra Standard & Dropouts Statistics CC: County Board Common Council College Board Milwaukee Legislative Delegation The Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is the only public school system in the U.S. that has implemented a policy that requires all 9th graders to take algebra in order to pass to the 10th grade. This reform initiative has caused the dropout statistic to be grossly overstated and has resulted in a fabricated controversy over the performance of the district. The negative image of the district is being ineptly managed by your administration, and skillfully exploited and manipulated by the local media. Your administration is out of control and causing great harm to the board and the district. In November 1996, MPS received an award and additional funding from the College Board for continuing and expanding the program, Equity 2000. MPS received an award for substituting algebra, which many failing students in all probability may never use, for consumer or economic math which employers minimally need students to master for most twenty first century employment. Not only will many of these ill prepared students who can't read above the third grade reading level never learn algebra but they are denied the opportunity to learn consumer math which will benefit them greatly. This school reform, initiated by former MPS Supt. Howard Fuller, has had disastrous results for many of the districts one hundred thousand students. In 1993-94 54% of MPS 9th graders passed Algebra, 1994-95 56%, and 1995-96 54% and only 19% of North Division 9th graders passed Algebra. Students that did not pass the exam were held back at the ninth grade which is not only demoralizing to students without adequate summer school opportunities in basic reading comprehension but caused a spurious dropout statistic to be generated for the district. This failed reform initiative has had catastrophic results for MPS, cannot be considered a success for which we should receive a reward, and has caused great harm to thousands of students for no good reason. There is a bulge, not explained by new students to the system, in 9th grade enrollments each year at MPS because thousands of 9th graders do not earn enough credits to become 10th graders. Ninth grade enrollment at MPS high schools increased by 1,256 from 93-94, when Algebra became a requirement, to 95-96. Since your administration makes no attempt to disaggregate new freshmen from continuing freshman in calculating the drop out statistic and makes no assessment of which students leave MPS for other districts where they can earn a diploma without the necessity of passing the ninth grade algebra test, the unnecessary and meaningless controversy over the district's performance will continue unabated into the future. I believe the formula for calculating the current dropout statistic was a convention of Susan and George Mitchell. Perhaps they would do well to take a MPS algebra course so they could get the formula right the first time. These pseudo researcher consultants outrageously use the difference between MPS 9th grade and 12th grade enrollments as a MPS graduation or dropout rate. The MPS graduation rate, measured by seniors who enroll in the fall of any given year who graduate in June has been in past years about 90%, the statewide average. (In 1994, my most recent data, 7 MPS schools were 91% to 96%) An accurate way to determine the rate of 9th graders who graduate later would be to disaggregate the continuing freshman from the new freshman and recalculate the dropout statistic, assuming you did not want to use the beginning senior year statistics for a better measure of dropouts. Valid dropout studies most often find that students indicate "personal reasons" for dropping out of school. It's time for more research on why students give the personal reason for dropping out of school and seek to determine what "personal" really means. Millions being spent on failed and pseudo school reforms in Milwaukee are being wasted and should be used reducing class size, reinstating summer school, resolving the severe teacher shortage problem and getting certified staff into every classroom, and providing adequate phonics reading instructional resources in the primary grades, particularly for the children of color who desperately need sound direct systematic phonics reading instruction. The high pay and high skill jobs of the future that require algebra and "high" academic skills simply don't exist for most graduates and especially for poverty class people of color. Furthermore, many students are unaware of the high skill high paying jobs that do exist. Many times, public schools are scapegoats for our social and economic problems caused by the loss of family living wage jobs. And many time there is simply political manipulation of the truth. Since the dropout rate, by your own administration's confessions, have been inaccurate and understated in the past and we must adjust for them now, the integrity of the database as well as the integrity of past administrations has been called into question. By somehow understating the past dropout rate, past district numbers have not been as severe as they should have been. It is unfortunate that your administration must bear the brunt of the questions that must be raised about the performance and ethics of those who ran the district in the past. Whether the discrepancies were a display of ineptitude or deceit gives reason for a careful audit of the past and more careful scrutiny of future data presented to the board and to the public in the board's behalf. You may want to seek an outside audit of the data to insure that the information is indeed accurately presented and all inconsistencies eliminated. I continue to be disappointed in the performance of your research department and your communications department. Leon Todd Milwaukee School Board member and 414-444-9490 Chair of Accountability and Audit Committee |