By Bob Oakes (WBUR)

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Over the course of the Project Dropout series, WBUR has looked at why some students leave school, how the problem affects the state and some examples of successful dropout prevention programs.

Here’s a small sampling of some of the voices we’ve heard:

I dropped out in middle school. I did seventh grade three times. My parents never enforced school. They never cared about my grades.

The fact that the dropout rate is not increasing is not by itself something to celebrate and we do need to do better.

This dropout issues is multifaceted. By the time a kid enters your classroom there’s whole bunch of issues that are stacked up on each other.

That’s 21-year-old former student Kendra Barlow from New Bedford, State Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester and Boston high-school teacher William Hayes.

Close to 100 Massachusetts students drop out of school every day.

As the conclusion to our series on the dropout problem, WBUR looks at what state officials hope to do about that alarming statistic.

To talk about possible policy solutions, WBUR spoke to Jill Norton, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy; and Tony Pierantozzi, superintendent of Somerville Public Schools and a member of the state’s dropout prevention commission.

By Bianca Vazquez Toness (WBUR)

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A new study say students learning English in Boston schools — nearly one-fifth of all Boston students — are at a big disadvantage under the all-English education program.

The report out of UMass Boston says, since English-only education went into effect six years ago, increasing numbers of immigrant students have dropped out or entered special-education programs.

In 2003, Massachusetts voters approved a referendum mandating all-English instruction for immigrant students. Boston residents, however, voted overwhelmingly against it.

Sociologist Miren Uriarte says there’s been little analysis of that law’s impact before the study by the Mauricio Gaston Institute at UMass Boston.

MIREN URIARTE: We did this study at the behest of community groups — immigrant communities — that were concerned about the lack of information that they were receiving from the Boston Public Schools about the situation of their children after the implementation of the changes that came with the referendum Question 2.

Before the referendum, English learners had the lowest dropout rates in the Boston Public Schools. Now they are the among the highest, going from five to 12 percent. Haitian and Vietnamese students’ dropout rates grew the most.

Uriarte says the old way of teaching immigrant students by grouping them by native language and using that language as a bridge for teaching English had it’s advantages.

URIARTE: It built a community around the child. Yes, I think that was important. At least it helped to engage kids. The outcomes were not so great. The academic outcomes were not so great.

The current program, called Sheltered English Immersion, uses simple English instruction to teach math, science and social studies. The teacher may use the native language to answer a question or clarify a point.

Standardized test scores have improved slightly using this model, but not as much as they have for the rest of students. So the achievement gap between English learners and everyone else has widened.

Besides test scores and dropout rates, the study reveals an increase in English learners entering special education, particularly programs where students are kept separate from mainstream students. In 2003, 4.9 percent of English learners were in substantially separate special-education classes. Now it’s almost 11 percent.

Boston Superintendent Carol Johnson says this is a problem.

SUPERINTENDENT CAROL JOHNSON: Teachers see a student struggling. They want to provide help. They’re not sure how to. And so sometimes students are referred to special education and sometimes those students need just extra help in acquiring English.

Johnson hopes that new district programs will give teachers more options. She plans to add more two-way bilingual programs that allow young children to study in Spanish and English simultaneously.

In February, the district began a Newcomers Academy for high-school students arriving to the district without speaking much English. And, the superintendent is overhauling the intake process for new students who don’t speak English.

Johnson hopes these measures will also help the school system comply with state and federal laws.

According to a recent state report, Boston schools are not providing any help learning English to more than 4,000 students. That’s almost half of the English-learner population. By law, if parents waive their right to the district English instruction program, the district has to provide an alternative.

JENNI LOPEZ: English-language learners have a right to a program, to appropriate services, to equal educational opportunity.

Jenni Lopez is a staff attorney with Multicultural Education Training and Advocacy, Inc. The non-profit has won lawsuits against school districts in other states that weren’t providing an adequate education to immigrant students.

LOPEZ: If you’re not offering that program, and the only choice a parent has is, ‘I’m opting out’ – I mean, there’s also a serious question as to what they’re opting out of. Are they opting out of all services for their kid or are they opting out of being bused across the city to another program?

Superintendent Johnson says the district isn’t doing enough to help immigrant parents pick the best schools and programs for their kids. She blames many of these problems on the implementation of the all-English education law.

JOHNSON: The change happened so quickly, without giving school districts probably sufficient time – at the time when it occurred – to really plan more thoughtfully.

Johnson says the district focused too much on teaching English as quickly as possible. Now the district will go back and look at the research to find better ways to teach English learners.

By Bianca Vazquez Toness (WBUR)

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Do school discipline policies force some kids to drop out?

The number of Massachusetts students suspended for 10 days or more has more than doubled in the last five years. During the 2006-2007 school year, more than 4,000 children in Massachusetts spent at least two weeks out of school on suspension. And studies show suspended kids are three times as likely to drop out as those who aren’t suspended.

It was his freshman year of high school, and Kamal Arty was excited to play lacrosse and take art classes at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. But instead, the 14-year-old spent much of the year at home.

 KAMAL ARTY: I sat at my house, I read books. I don’t really like playing video games, so I just read books.

His troubles began at a homecoming dance, where a friend was having an argument with another woman who he thought was another student. Kamal claims he tried to break it up. Turned out that woman was a teacher. She pressed assault charges the next week.

ARTY: I don’t know, I couldn’t believe it. No way that I feel I assaulted her.

Kamal’s mother, Malika Arty, asked school officials to explain what happened, and when they couldn’t, she complained.

MALIKA ARTY: That it was absurd. Like, ‘You’re saying what about my child?’

Arty says her son never got in trouble before the incident with the teacher.

ARTY: He was always very well-liked. In fact — quite a few of his teachers, his lacrosse coach, his football coach, his local barber – everybody wrote letters for him saying that they’d never, ever seen any violent nature in him whatsoever. His science teacher said he would stake his reputation as an educator. I never forgot that line.

But those letters didn’t help, and the principal suspended him indefinitely. Although Kamal eventually got back into school, his mother says the suspension made him a different kid.

ARTY: I definitely think he’s changed, I think he’s less motivated. I think that if he saw the same situation he might walk right by. And that kind of hurts me because I raised him to be the kid that stepped up into it, like ’What is going on here?’ And I think  right now he might be like,’That has nothing to do with me.’ Just because when you get slapped on the hand that hard, you kind of learn not to touch the fire. So I wonder if he doesn’t step into any fires anymore.

Under Massachusetts laws, principals have the power to remove students from schools when they assault school personnel, or if they are charged with a felony.

And school officials are increasingly exercising that power. During the 2006-2007 school year, principals across the state suspended or expelled students 64,000 times. Three hundred and sixty-five students were thrown out of school permanently.

Joanne Karger is a staff attorney for the Center for Law and Education, an organization that focuses on the right of all students to a high-quality education.

JOANNE KARGER: Although suspensions are the most common form of punishment, there’s little evidence that suspensions result in reducing problematic behavior or in actually making schools safer. And in fact when students are removed from their regular education environnment, they end up falling behind in their schoolwork and they become academically disengaged.

Cambridge Public School officials won’t comment on a specific student’s situation. But spokesman Justin Martin says the principals in his city use discretion when they discipline students.

And Cambridge has a lower rate of suspension than many other districts. But some parents are still worried the district is misusing its power.

Shanti Oppenheimer also lives in Cambridge. He got in trouble for something that happened out of school, before he even started at the city’s high school.

SHANTI OPPENHEIMER: Summer after eighth grade, it was an unarmed robbery case and assault.

Oppenheimer was with friends who took someone’s money and iPod. He was thrown out of Cambridge and sent to a special education program in Boston.

He returned to Cambridge the next year, after the case was resolved. He was happy to be back.

OPPENHEIMER: I was excited. That was the school I was supposed to be going to.

A few days into the new school year, there was a shooting and witnesses told school officials Oppenheimer was on school grounds.

OPPENHEIMER: They searched me. At the time I had a leafy green substance in my pocket and then in my backpack they found a big knife.

Oppenheimer was expelled, and later arrested.

OPPENHEIMER: I’m not saying that I didn’t mess up, I’m just saying, like, they might have thought I was going to succeed, but I feel like they all had doubts. And I guess their doubts came true when I was expelled, but I just felt like if they already expected me to fail — like that’s just kind of weird, you know.

Cambridge Public School officials wouldn’t comment on Oppenheimer’s case, but Tom Scott from the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents says principals need the power to suspend and expel students.

TOM SCOTT: We cannot afford to go backwards and take away what’s one of the few tools that many of the school’s have to maintain an environment thats going to be in the best interest of majority of the kids. It’s a fine balance between those individuals who are denied some access and the vast majority of kids who should not be subjected to some of the stuff that goes on.

But advocates say the schools use suspension to remove kids who are harder to educate — namely, special education students. And the numbers do raise questions: 67 percent of the students suspended and expelled last year were special education students, when they make up only 17 percent of the state-wide school population.

Center for Law and Education attorney Joanne Karger.

KARGER: So even though they’re entitled to receive the appropriate help and instruction to address their disability, they’re being punished for their disability.

Karger and her group do suggest alternatives, mainly something they call “restorative justice.” Under that model, when kids get in trouble they would have to enter mediation with their peers and anyone else affected by their behaviour. The group would come up with a resolution together.

Shanti Oppenheimer’s mother, Sue Brent, says no one considered why her son brought a knife to school — that maybe he was scared in a new, big school after a shooting on campus.

SUE BRENT: Kids just…they sometimes do not think through their actions, they just quickly do what feels right in the moment, without really thinking it through. If he had thought through this whole thing, he never in a million years would have done it because of all that he’s lost.

Because he can’t return to Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Oppenheimer is back at the special-education program in Boston, which he says doesn’t compare.

OPPENHEIMER: I’m not getting the same education. I get little packets that my sister could do for homework. It’s kind of ridiculous.  But I don’t feel like I’m learning that much on a day-to-day basis.

While he’s looking for another school, Oppenheimer may have no alternative. Since he was expelled, he has lost his right to an education in Massachusetts schools. He’s in the school in Boston only because federal law mandates some schooling for anyone considered a special-education student. But that, he says, won’t prepare him for college.

OPPENHEIMER: The economy’s not looking great. How am I supposed to get by without going to college?

If she could, Oppenheimer’s mom says she’d take out her checkbook and sign him up for private school.

By Deborah Becker (WBUR)

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A classroom at University Park Campus School. Located inside an old elementary school in Worcester's poorest neighborhood, every student has gone on to post-secondary education. (Deborah Becker/WBUR)

The high-school dropout rate in urban areas of the United States is described as a crisis. Here in Massachusetts, the dropout rate in some urban districts is more than triple the state average.

But one school defying the odds is the University Park Campus School in Worcester, an urban public high school, where virtually every student has gone on to post-secondary education. The school and its partner, Clark University, are getting attention from educators around the world.

The friendly mood inside the University Park Campus School is a stark contrast to what’s outside. In the main south area of Worcester, the city’s poorest, roughest neighborhood, University Park is located amid some gritty triple deckers inside an old former elementary school.

There is no gymnasium or sports fields or computer labs. A sign above the front door says, “The school with a promise.” And that promise for the 240 seventh through twelfth graders here is that they’ll leave ready for college.

Anthony Hodges is a freshman.

ANTHONY HODGES: When I started at this school, it was hard. Cuz they pile, pile homework on you. For me, if I went to a different school, I probably would have been a bad boy. Once you come here, they force you – they want you to go to college, you do this, that, that, and you can make it.”

But many of the students here have the challenges of students who typically don’t make it. Almost three quarters of them qualify for free lunch, 67 percent speak English as a second language, 95 percent of them do not have a parent who attended college. On average they come in two years below grade level, says administrator and teacher Ricky Hall.

RICKY HALL: As a rule, we’re getting kids coming in relatively depleted academically. Our role in grades seven and eight is very intense academic wrap around, bolstering what they need for academic success in high school. By grade nine, they’re taking a full slate of honors level courses.

Since the school opened in 1997, every student has gone on to post-secondary education, every student has passed the MCAS. Last year, the school’s dropout rate was zero. Dan St. Lewis has been teaching at University Park for nine years.

DAN ST. LEWIS: In the same way that if I had a kid in high school I wouldn’t let him drop out, we don’t allow our kids to drop out here.

Melanny Dominguez, a student at University Park, has a full scholarship to attend Union College in New York this fall. (Deborah Becker/WBUR)

Not only are they graduating, many are going on to selective colleges. Melanny Dominquez has a full scholarship to attend Union College in New York this fall. She says the students don’t want to let their teachers down.

MELANNY DOMINQUEZ: My mom dropped out because of me. I’m her only child. She’s thankful to the teachers. She comes in to talk to my guidance counselor, they’re planning on — the day I move in to college — they’re planning on going.

Mary O’Sullivan is the University Park guidance counselor. She says a big difference in this school compared with others she’s worked at is that none of the 17 staff members allow a students background or circumstances to become an excuse for not succeeding.

MARY O’SULLIVAN: It’s fun to be around people who like kids. I was in other schools where I wouldn’t go into the teachers’ room because they just complained about kids. Now they say, ‘This kid got an A. Do you believe it?’ And the kids get excited too. They beam, they’re proud, their behavior on the street is different.

Expectations of student behavior are as high as academic expectations, according to Donna Rodriquez, the school’s founding principal. She grew up in this Worcester neighborhood and says she wanted to create a school that emphasized values she felt were missing in the other schools where she worked.

DONNA RODRIQUEZ: I had seen a student murdered at the large comprehensive school. So I had an explicit code of discipline: No cursing, no street talk or that kind of language.

When creating the school, Rodriquez also stood firm on the idea that the students must be randomly selected. The University Park students are chosen by a lottery, except for current students siblings, who are automatically admitted. About 150 kids apply for the 44 new seventh grade slots open each year. The only admissions requirement is that parents attend an informational meeting and fill out a one-page application.

In the classrooms, teachers also use certain instruction methods to encourage participation among all students — the seventh- and eighth-grade curriculum is described as boot camp with intense math and language work. Students are frequently required to help teach other students; there’s an emphasis on writing and, in most of the classrooms, there are a lot of active discussions taking place and a lot of group work. The average class size is about 20 students.

These instructional methods were developed with the help of nearby Clark University, which is a partner with the school. Because of its concerns about the deteriorating neighborhood, Clark approached Worcester officials about how to improve the area and about how to stem the city’s rising school dropout rate.

Jack Foley, a spokesman for Clark, says the university does not provide any financial support to the school, but its students volunteer and tutor, it offers use of some of its facilities and if a University Park student is admitted to Clark, tuition is free.

JACK FOLEY: Most of the kids in this neighborhood think college is for rich kids. We have a vested interest as a university in seeing these kids succeed. Because their success means we’re successful in the neighborhood.

Foley is also a member of the Worcester School Committee, so he deals with the city’s other public schools, where the dropout rate is six percent. Foley says replicating University Park is not a financial concern.

FOLEY: The per-pupil allocation in that school is the same as any high school in Worcester. Some enhancement from Clark, but it really is the opportunities for these students.

About 1,000 educators from around the country have visited Worcester to see if University Park can serve as a model for how to improve urban education and how to work with a university to dispel the notion that demographics are destiny.

Want to hear more about the University Park Campus School? Listen to Deb Becker’s extended interview with Ricky Hall, the coordinator of University Park, on why his school is so successful.

By Sacha Pfeiffer (WBUR)

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In the state’s poorest households, some children grow up without books, without making trips to the library, and without family conversations that help build vocabularies. That puts many of these kids at an educational disadvantage at the beginning of life, increasing their risk of becoming high school dropouts.

Boston is trying to change that by knocking on doors at public housing projects to offer help to the poorest families in the city. The Boston Centers for Youth and Families is training low-income parents to be their children’s first teacher, and to make their homes their children’s first classroom.

This weekly play group at the Charlestown Community Center looks — and sounds — like a typical toddler get-together. There’s music and reading and toys and laughter. And, yes, also some crying.

(SOUND OF CHILD WAILING)

But ask Radaisy Santana what this group has done for her three-year-old son Adrian and her eyes light up. She says in the year or so he’s has been coming here, his temper has improved, he listens better and he’s learned a lot.

RADAISY SANTANA: He know the colors, some letters.

Santana also says while Adrian used to speak mostly only her native language, he’s quickly become bilingual.

SANTANA: Now he speaking English and Spanish.

Santana and her son wouldn’t have been here if the city’s Smart from the Start program hadn’t helped coax them to come, along with other low-income families from public housing projects in Charlestown, Mattapan and Roslindale. Some of these families were so isolated they rarely left their houses.

Santana says before she joined this play group she mostly kept Adrian at home. That didn’t give him much exposure to English or to new places and new ideas. And program director Cherie Craft says those early years offer prime learning opportunities.

CHERIE CRAFT: These families and these children are not able to make the best use of that time. Because families are worried about putting food on the table. They’re having substance issues. Kids spend a lot of time alone in the apartment, without stimulation. And these are the kids that are falling through the gaps.

Craft says many low-income parents have little time or energy to focus on their kids’ educations. And she says almost 80 percent of the families who joined Smart from the Start hadn’t known that talking to their kids could increase their language skills. So the program makes sure parents know their children are born ready to learn.

CRAFT: We have one parent who also has a 16-year-old daughter and said, ‘When she was a little baby I was just happy when she was good. I would put her in the seat and I would clean the house.’ She said, ‘Now I see my one-year-old talking sooner, she understands things. I cannot believe the changes that I’ve seen in myself as a parent.

Since Smart from the Start began last year, more than 10 percent of the families it’s reached have signed up for programs like English classes, career planning and money management. The idea is that educated parents raise educated children, so the program’s goal is universal school readiness that will help all kids become high school graduates. Laurie Sherman, who helped create Smart from the Start, wants the city’s poorest families to realize their kids can blossom without fancy schools or expensive toys.

LAURIE SHERMAN: You know what? If you sing and talk to me and read to me in any language — let’s say you don’t know English and what you have at home is a book in Chinese — that helps me learn. And that helps my brain grow. And that gets me ready for school. And then I’m going to succeed in school when I get there. And then I’m going to want to stay in school. It’s really that simple.

In Sherman’s City Hall office there’s a poster that reads, “Home is a Child’s First School.” It’s meant to encourage parents to treat their homes as classrooms by doing things like explaining measurements when they’re cooking or talking about addresses when the mail arrives. Smart from the Start also trains parents to point out shapes and colors and new words.

SHERMAN: Think about it: If you’re a kid and you get to kindergarten and you’re learning to read and write words you’ve never heard, that can be as difficult as learning a foreign language.

Smart from the Start even tries to help kids still in the womb. It does that by making sure pregnant women know where their local libraries, health centers and other community resources are so they’ll have a ready support network once their babies are born. So far, the program has helped 160 families, including almost 300 children. It costs about $700,000 a year. Five hundred thousand of that comes from the United Way and several private foundations. Again, Laurie Sherman.

SHERMAN: What we’re trying to do in Boston is invest early in kids and continue that investment through the school-age years. And then all of our kids could graduate if we do this right.

(SOUND OF CHILDREN’S PLAY GROUP)

Back at the Charlestown play group, Radaisy Santana says she is now thinking of herself as her son’s teacher, and her home as his classroom.

SANTANA: When I’m doing something in the house, I’m talking about what I do. When I cooking, when I use the washing machine, he help me — ‘Mommy, I help you!’ When I’m making pancakes, he open the eggs. He like to help me.

Smart from the Start hopes that kind of parenting will help Santana’s son — and other kids in the program — thrive in school, all the way through high school.

By Monica Brady-Myerov (WBUR)

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In May, a legislative commission is expected to deliver its recommendations for ways to reduce the school dropout rate. The dropout rate has not improved for a decade. Each day in Massachusetts close to 100 students drop out of school. Gov. Patrick hopes to cut that figure by 25 percent within the next two years.

One measure being considered is raising the legal dropout age from 16 to 18. The idea may sound like a simple solution, but it has many critics.

This GED class in Haverhill is small. Eight students sit at long tables facing the white board. It allows instructor Jeff Reddy time to sit down with students individually. Some instruction begins with basic skills that are usually taught in middle school.

The General Educational Development, or GED, test was created in 1942 for World War II veterans who had not completed high school. But the profile of a GED student has changed since then. In this class, there are many 16 and 17 year olds. Nancy Tariot is in charge of the GED classes those kids attend. 

NANCY TARIOT: When they come in here with their backpacks on and they say they want their GED and I tell them, ‘You know what, this is an adult ed program and we’ll treat you like an adult, which means it’s up to you to do your homework and it’s up to you to study and we don’t do basketball and we don’t do proms.’

Tariot says she counsels young students against leaving school to enter a GED program.

TARIOT:  My personal feeling is they should increase the age at which children are allowed to drop out of school, because a 16 year old is not a good person to be making that kind of decision, but they do.

Raising the mandatory attendance age is expected to be one of the recommendations from the legislature’s dropout commission. There’s little political or research consensus on whether it works to lower the dropout rate.

Gov. Deval Patrick says he’d consider supporting keeping kids in school until they’re 18. State Rep. Marie St. Fleur, who is on the dropout commission, is in favor of raising the age. She says schools statewide lose 91 students a day.

MARIE ST. FLEUR: Maybe it quiets our classroom, but what happens to the lives of those people at the end of the day? And it’s not simply their lives we impact – they will have children — we impact the generations that come from them after that.

And St. Fleur says 16 year olds are not equipped to make a decision that will affect the rest of their lives. But by law, 16 year olds can dropout of school without undergoing an intervention or even getting a signature from a parent. Even a 14 year old can leave school with an employment waiver as long as they work at least six hours a day.  Schools are supposed to conduct exit interviews, but many don’t. 

VANESSA JOHNSON: Once I turned 16 I was like, ‘Finally I’m really not going to school now.’

Vanessa Johnson, who’s now 18, says she left because she was suspended twice and fell far behind her peers. Now, as the mother of a new baby, she wishes she had been forced to stay beyond 16 years old.

JOHNSON: I think they should change that you can drop out when you’re 16 because you’re not an adult yet — you shouldn’t be able to make your own choices whether you should be able to drop out or not at 16.

Supporters of increasing the mandatory attendance age point to a study which suggests that staying in school may also increase students earning potential. It was co-authored by Joshua Angrist, a labor economist at MIT who studies the economics of education. Angrist says when kids are forced to stay in school longer, it pays.

JOSHUA ANGRIST: Each year of schooling  raises your earnings about 10 percent, and that really adds up because if you think about somebody who goes to college and spends a couple years doing something else, they might have 40 years of working life, so that 10 percent higher earnings every year is millions and millions of dollars.

But some critics say the study is outdated because it used census data from decades ago. It might be more applicable to look at the dropout rate in the 19 states that have a compulsory age of 18. The Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy recently looked at those states. Researcher Lisa Famularo says  you would expect them to have lower dropout rates, but they don’t.

LISA FAMULARO: Of the states that have the lowest dropout rates, only five of them have a compulsory age of 18. 

Famularo says the proposal to raise the age in Massachusetts should get careful scrutiny in this difficult budget time.

FAMULARO: I would rather see the state spend its money on implementing programs to help support students, to better engage them in school, than spend money on enforcing a law which is going to throw them back into the environment that is not working for them.

And may not work for the whole classroom. The Massachusetts Teachers Association has not taken a position on the proposal. But many teachers oppose it, including Steven Berbeco, who teaches government and politics at Charlestown High School.

STEVEN BERBECO: You can’t legislate education, you can’t pass a law to make people learn more. Our communities will get better results out of building models that invite students to stay in the classroom rather than passing a law to lock them in the school.

Another teacher says you can use the law to keep a 17 year old in a classroom, but to keep the student focused and learning is a totally different proposition.

By Bob Oakes (WBUR)

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A welding class at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School in Upton, Mass. (Sarah Bush/WBUR)

An estimated 3.8 percent of Massachusetts high-school students never graduate, but there’s one segment of high schools where the drop-out rate is about half that — vocational schools. 
 
“Voc schools” outperform traditional high schools by some other measures as well.  For example, the four-year graduation rate is 10 points higher than the state average.

We visited Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School in Upton, where the drop-out rate is actually under one percent, to find out what’s going right.

Jeremy Lacourse is a sophomore at Blackstone. (Sarah Bush/WBUR)

There we met successful student after successful student, including sophomore Jeremy Lacourse, who was busy working on a project in the heating, venting and air-conditioning unit, or HVAC. 

JEREMY LACOURSE: The big line with the insulation on it right now is the suction line. And then the smaller line, which I ran, is the liquid line, which is the hot line…

Clearly pleased with his work, we asked Lacourse why he applied to come here over two years ago.

LACOURSE: I wanted to have a good standing of where I would be when I got out of school.

BOB OAKES: So you came here with a good idea of what you wanted to do when you got out of school?

LACOURSE: Yes.

OAKES: And what is that?

LACOURSE: I want to go to college for actually business management for HVAC.

OAKES: Tell us how you think your experience is different here than it would be if you’d gone to another high school.

LACOURSE: I don’t think I would be able to know as much as I do now. I wouldn’t know the basic electrical that goes into just flipping a switch every day.

OAKES: How’ve you been doing school wise?

LACOURSE: A’s and B’s.

Voc schools still train students in HVAC and other trades such as plumbing and carpentry, but they also offer instruction in areas such as graphic communication and business technology. 

Students split their time, spending one week in shop and then one week in academic courses, but that doesn’t mean academic standards are any lower than at traditional high schools.

By law, vocational high-school students must pass the MCAS student achievement test to graduate.

Blackstone Valley became the first voc-tech school in the state where 100 percent of students passed the MCAS to graduate. In fact this year’s senior class is the sixth in a row to achieve that 100-percent competency.

Blackstone Superintendent Michael Fitzpatrick says it’s that hands-on experience that’s key to student success in this and other voc-tech schools.  

SUPERINTENDENT MICHAEL FITZPATRICK: One of the biggest differences is the fact that they offer curriculum that is applied or a situation where students can utilize the theory that’s taught in classroom and actually see a practical application in multiple laboratories and in integrated instruction. Clearly in our conversations with the more than 1,100 students that we serve, it’s a motivational aspect to their learning.

OAKES: They’re motivated because they get their hands on and that’s a good thing. They can see how the learning applies right in front of them.

FITZPATRICK: That’s correct, but a key aspect to that is the manner that teachers in both academic and vocational and career tech blend a little bit of both to create the added motivation, the added experience and the exciting aspects of the learning that motivate students to do more.

That is certainly the case in the noisy heating, venting and air conditioning shop run by Thomas Belland, himself a Blackstone graduate. We spoke in the high-school boiler room, which is in fact a classroom.

THOMAS BELLAND: You’re looking at four modern boilers. These burn either oil or gas, but they burn it at a very efficient rate.

OAKES: The kids are responsible for some of this, aren’t they?

BELLAND: We do 99 percent of the maintenance, repairs and installations in the building. It’s like their signature on the school.

OAKES: It’s like everything becomes a learning experience, even heating and cooling the building at the moment?

BELLAND: Absolutely. We have a crew of students throughout the building every day working on the systems, designing new systems, dealing with customers, taking calls, filling out the paperwork. They get the real world experience.

Katelyn Christiansen is a senior at Blackstone. (Sarah Bush/WBUR)

It’s that real world experience that makes 17-year-old Katelyn Christiansen’s eyes light up as we talk with her in the crowded school cafeteria. Katelyn will graduate in June.

KATELYN CHRISTIANSEN: It gives you a head up because you’re learning not only regular high school, you’re learning a job – you have a trade. Say you go to college — you can work in that field and further your education in the field as well.

OAKES: So you feel that based on this you can see where you’re going?

CHRISTIANSEN: Yes.

OAKES: And where are you going?

CHRISTIANSEN: I’m going to college for biotechnology to do research.

So voc ed isn’t only for trade training anymore. In fact about 70 percent of the Blackstone Valley graduates have pursued college education in recent years.  

But there’s more to getting voc-ed students interested in school than giving them hands-on shop training.

One in four students enters Blackstone at a fourth-grade reading level, exacerbating the risk they could eventually fail the MCAS test, not graduate or drop out.

We asked Superintendent Michael Fitzpatrick how Blackstone addresses that issue.

FITZPATRICK: As soon as a student makes application to our system in the eighth grade, we’re immediately analyzing their previous skill sets in MCAS — we’re already building up programs that will strengthen their skills before they take the test.

OAKES: In the application process, does the school tend to filter out kids that are going to need help — kids that you know by looking at the data that they have when they apply are going to have trouble getting the pass grade on the MCAS?

FITZPATRICK: No, the real pride is you can take students wherever they might be and advance them. The admissions process is a state-approved adnmissions process that doesn’t indicate if a student is, for example, on a special-education plan and there is no entrance exam to come here. And the population mirrors that of the district we serve.

For some Blackstone students slipping behind academically there is individualized remediation. Others are coached in a variety of different settings in person at school or at Saturday camps, summer camps and vacation camps. And there is online help.

And the help, says Superintendent Fitzpatrick, goes beyond academics as the school assists the child in both mind and body.

FITZPATRICK: In fact, every student here has a wellness plan. It’s a case where our partnership with an area hospital is a satellite center in our building. And we have access to a nurse practitioner, a nutritionist and other staff members, all of whom work in tangent with our traditional instructors and we also have two school nurses. All contributing to better test scores. And another reason: We want every student to be safe here, and we also want them to know that we care. We want them to be very much a part of our family.

More and more eighth graders across the state are applying to vocational schools.

At Blackstone, 700 students signed up for the class of 2012 — competing for just 300 spots – and there’s similar demand at other voc schools.

So, if voc schools are so successful at combating dropout and improving student performance, why aren’t there more of them?

David Ferreira is executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators.

DAVID FERREIRA: Capacity is an issue. And I think, quite honestly, a lot of it is finance. In this fiscal climate, to enlarge these schools is very difficult.

And money is an issue beyond school expansion or school-building projects. Voc-ed schools spend more per student — about $4,000 more per year — than at traditional high schools.

The higher cost is partly due to the pricey technology and shop equipment on hand, and the lower student-teacher ratio required for safety reasons because the students use all that equipment.

While voc-tech education is not for everyone, administrators say its success surely means demand for it — whether it’s HVAC, carpentry, computer tech, or welding — will remain high in coming years.

By Deborah Becker (WBUR)

One of President Obama’s proposals to improve education is to increase high-school graduation rates. The challenge is daunting, especially in urban high schools where in some cases 50 percent of the students don’t graduate on time.

But a school in Worcester, Mass., is defying those odds and other schools around the country are taking note. The University Park Campus School is a public school located in the poorest section of Worcester, near Clark University. Clark says improving the area outside its gates will benefit the university, as well as its neighbors. So Clark provides student volunteers, the use of some campus facilities and the promise that those University Park students who meet Clark’s admission standards will be able to go to college there for free.

Clark provides no money to the school — it’s funded like all the other public schools in Worcester. And in the 11 years since University Park opened, every student has not only graduated, but gone on to post-secondary education. We visited University Park, which is in an unassuming, rather rundown, former Worcester elementary school. Instead of things such as computer labs and sports fields, there is a lot of enthusiasm.

Anthony Hodges is a freshman.

ANTHONY HODGES: When I started at this school, it was hard. Cuz like they, ‘pow, pow, pow’ homework on you. And see, me, if I went to a different school…probably would have been a bad boy. Because I used to be a troublemaker in elementary, used to be always like playing around, never doing homework. And once you come here, they just force you, like, ‘You want to go to college? You gotta do this, this, that and you can make it.’

We asked Ricky Hall, the coordinator of the University Park Campus School, why his school is so successful.

RICKY HALL: I think first and foremost it’s our shared and collective mission of student success here. I think all the teachers and staff bring to the school a genuine belief that all students can succeed and all students will go to college. And from the moment they walk in here in grade seven that’s our promise to them and that becomes a driving force — a driving cultural force — in the building. And everything is towards that end.

So, their rigorous academic coursework is to that end, but also their behavioral and academic and civic expectations are to that end. Kids take tough courses here. They don’t have a choice on what kind of course they take, they take all honors courses, all those courses are the core academic areas.

DEBORAH BECKER:  A lot of folks might say, ‘Well, doesn’t that happen at every school?’ Or, ‘Shouldn’t it?’

HALL: Yeah, it should. It should. And in the good schools it does. I think our smallness is another major factor here, because we only have 240 students or so, we have 17 teachers here. And so everybody feels like we’re a family. And much of it is, you know, kind of  “us against the world” kind of mentality. We know that there are challenges here, but collectively we can overcome them.

What makes this place different is it’s the same material being taught in other schools, it’s just being taught really well here.  I mean it’s being taught by expert teachers who love kids, who love their content area and work really hard to make sure that they, you know, bring that love to their students.

BECKER: A lot of the reasons that we hear – or the factors that we hear – of why kids drop out are poverty, English-language learners, mobility — people moving around a lot, not a lot of family support at home. It seems like you have all those factors and yet you’re defying the odds.

HALL: Yeah. I mean I think we have some kids that have all those factors you just listed, we have some kids that have some of them. I think every kid has at least one, for the most part. But yeah, poverty. We have ELL students. We have special ed students. We have the same group of factors and yet we consistently see, you know, very strong academic success.

It’s not just the instruction, but that’s a big part of it. I think part of it also is that kids come here and recognize that we’re just not going to let you fail. And it’s not just that we won’t accept you to fail, we won’t accept you not succeeding. It’s just not a matter of getting you through high school, but beyond that. It’s getting you into college, it’s getting you through college.  There’s a general misconception about the school that we cream the crop or take the best, academically most talented students in the city and that is the reason why we’re successful. But, in reality, our kids come here challenged as a population. Generally reading below grade level, doing math below grade level.

As a rule, we’re getting kids who are coming relatively depleted academically and challenged academically. Our role in grade seven and eight is to do a lot of wraparound academic and social services to kind of get them up to speed to be able to make access to a rigorous ninth grade curriculum. So seventh and eighth  grade is kind of this very intense, kind of bolstering the skills that are needed for high school success. And then by grade nine they’re taking a full slate of honors-level courses.

BECKER: Kids get in via lottery, is that right?

HALL: That’s right. Yeah.  So every year we accept 44 new seventh graders. The only admissions application requirement is that they live within a defined district around Clark University, that Clark defines around the school.

BECKER: Now is that something that parents have to sign up for or how do people get in the lottery? I’m wondering, are you dealing with a fairly committed group of parents?

HALL: That’s a good question. We send out notification to all the students in our Worcester public school system that show an address on the defined streets, explaining to them that there’s an informational meeting that they need to come to where they fill out the application. And so, that’s as much as we require of them. We don’t require any other things other than to show up to that informational meeting and fill out a very short application. The application’s merely: name, address, telephone number, that kind of thing. We don’t take test scores or anything like that. I think we do have some selective process there, that you know parents have to physically come, you know, to the meeting and fill out the application.

BECKER: Do you think that this model can be replicated in other places?

HALL: I get nervous when people want to just come here and take it like a cookie cutter and move it somewhere else and try to use the exact same model, because you know I think the school’s success is by virtue of not just its design principles, but also by the human beings who are here.

That being said, I think there are some clear, important lessons that come out of this school’s success. That if taken properly and used properly, I think could in fact really make people re-tool their understanding of how urban education is done. It’s not just –  some people have tried to figure it out by saying, ‘Well, it’s the smallness. Right, it’s the smallness that makes a difference. So we’re just going to make all of our big schools small.’ Well that’s not the only component of our success here. It’s one, but it’s not the only component. And when it doesn’t end up being successful they throw their hands up and go, ‘I can’t figure out why this doesn’t work.’

Well, it’s not just smallness. It’s part of it. So, if it were done really thoughtfully — someone came in and really said, ‘Let’s look at these design principles. Let’s try to replicate what makes sense for another school and really dive into what makes it successful here’ — I think it could be replicated. But this ‘quick fix, magic pill, we’ll make it small — that’s the reason why it’s successful’ — I don’t think that’s something that would actually work.

By Monica Brady-Myerov (WBUR)

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There are many safety nets built into schools to catch failing students, including tutoring, counseling, calls to absent students and frequent face-to-face check-ins. But sometimes they just don’t work. So there’s another option — alternative school. These schools are for students who are chronically absent and below grade level.

BEATRIZ ZAPATER: We are an ungraded school. We’re competency-based, which means that students have to demonstrate their learning on benchmarks across a series of academic classes.

Beatriz Zapater, co-head of one alternative school, Boston Day and Evening Academy in Roxbury, says if students meet the benchmarks, they can catch up quickly. The charter school offers courses during the day, in the evening and online. It’s flexible and tailored to each student’s needs, which allows many to work at the same time. This attention helps those who had completely given up on school, says Nastasia Lawton, the academy’s advancement associate.

NASTASIA LAWTON: They’ve all experienced significant gaps in their education or difficulties — some of them have already dropped out and are coming back, some of them are at risk for dropping out and we’re trying to prevent that.

VANESSA MARTINEZ:  I was actually out of school for about three and a half months.

Vanessa Martinez is 18 years old.

MARTINEZ: It was just too much. It felt like a burden, like I felt like I was going crazy so I was like, ‘I’m not gonna go.’ And then I came here and I just did like a complete 360.

Martinez dropped out because she couldn’t concentrate on her studies, now she is excelling academically. She’s even student government president. She’s lucky to have gotten one of the 350 seats in this school. Most alternative schools have waiting lists.

Because these schools have smaller classes, more support staff and sometimes longer hours, they cost districts more to run. Boston Day and Evening Academy spends $3000 more per student than other Boston public schools. Despite the higher cost, there’s a strong commitment, says Phil Jackson, who oversees the 16 alternative schools in Boston.

PHIL JACKSON: This is very urgent that we do some reprogramming around our alternative network. I think even in light of our budget challenge I must credit our superintendent with making this a priority.

Demand for alternative schools is up across the state. Even in Natick, where the annual drop-out rate is less than one percent.

MARK MORTARELLI: This our social workers’ office. And this is our artroom.

Mark Mortarelli runs the North Star School, an alternative program inside Natick High School.  The program is 30 years old.  10 years ago there were 12 students, now there are 46.

MORTARELLI: We’re busting at the seams at this point.

Mortarelli says that’s because of the growth of the Natick high- school population. But it’s also because more kids aren’t functioning in the regular high school.

MORTARELLI: Our younger students are usually referred here because they aren’t making it in the mainstream. They are skipping classes. Their attendance is poor. They are having behavior problems in the academic areas, which is all affecting their grades.

Mortarelli says the program has smaller classes with individual focus. Many programs, such as Natick’s, offer work study and extended hours. But it doesn’t work for every student and it’s hard on staff.

MORTARELLI: It’s certainly not an easy job, there’s very explosive behaviors. Some of the students come in here not ready to learn, not ready for school — that’s why they are here. They don’t want to be here, some of them, and it’s a struggle to get them motivated, to get them focused.

And most students in alternative schools are way behind academically.

KHAFRE NURSE:  My eighth grade year, you know,  I realized I couldn’t really read.

Khafre Nurse was arrested several times for gang involvement before coming to Boston Day and Evening Academy. It was his probation officer who suggested he go to the alternative school. At first he caused trouble, but then he connected with his teachers.

NURSE:  I don’t know what they saw in me. Like I woulda kicked me out. But, it was like I was their, like, art project. They treated me like canvas and you know made this beautiful mural out of me.

Now this beautiful mural is a freshman at Hampshire College on a full scholarship. He says if he could catch up and get a high school diploma, anything is possible. But educators worry that dropouts are not a population on top of politicians’ priority lists. So solutions that have been shown to work, such as alternative schools, are under-funded and are being further curtailed because of budget cuts. Boston Day and Evening Academy lost 24 percent of its budget for next year.