Stopping the Dropout Exodus

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Classes at South Brooklyn have 18 to 25 students, as opposed to as many as 34 in the city's large high schools. Students call their teachers by their first name. Because the school runs on a trimester system, kids can rack up credits more quickly than they could at an ordinary high school--part of the plan to keep them moving briskly toward graduation day. The teachers favor a hands-on approach; there's very little chalk and talk. Perez says he used to hate U.S. history. "In my old school, they'd just give you a page number and tell you to answer questions in the text." At South Brooklyn, he says, "we'll study a court case for a week, and the second week, we act it out. When it's test time, you remember it."

Students are pushed toward New York State's demanding Regents diploma, which means passing seven exams, and toward higher education. They must participate in the city's Learning to Work program, which teaches employment skills, provides college and career counseling, and offers subsidized internships. While not everyone loves his or her internship, Garcia was so inspired by her stint at a youth newspaper that she now hopes to study journalism in college.

Most of the same elements are at work at the YABC in Lehmann High School in the Bronx, where Maisonet spends her evenings. There are small classes led by dynamic teachers, a Learning to Work program and close relationships with counselors from a health and social-services group. The atmosphere here is a bit more no-nonsense. The 250 students are all over 17, and many have weighty daytime responsibilities. "They have kids at home. Some are pregnant. Some are homeless," says assistant principal Martin Smallhorne, an energetic young administrator who works hard to create a personalized program inside one of the city's larger and less intimate high schools.

The clock is ticking for his 310 students. The goal: get them to graduation before they hit 21 and age out of the system. YABCS stress efficient scheduling. To attend, students must have spent at least four years in high school and have accumulated at least 17 credits. "Their transcripts tend to be a mess," says Michele Cahill, who helped create the Multiple Pathways program and is now at the Carnegie Corporation. Students might be missing the second half of algebra and three years of phys ed. "Ordinary high schools are not set up to deal with these kinds of gaps," says Cahill, but a good YABC can sometimes get the job done in a year. New data show that about one-quarter of students at YABCS and transfer schools go on to college.

Klein plans to greatly expand the number of transfer schools and YABCS over the remaining 2 1/2 years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration. Replicating successful programs is always tricky, but in this case there's a peculiar obstacle. Under state- and federal-accountability rules, schools full of students who don't graduate on time are labeled failing. By that definition, YABCS and transfer schools fail no matter how brilliant a job they are doing. "It's hard to get partners to invest and hard to attract strong leaders when the school is labeled failing," says Hamilton.

New York will also have to stem the tide of students who fall behind in the first place. Ninth grade is a major pitfall. Parthenon found that 78% of kids who become overage and undercredited had to repeat freshman year. One key is improving reading skills in middle school--a challenge nationally. Last year 37% of the city's eighth-graders were proficient in reading, up from 30% in 2002 but still a long way from ideal. Another key, Klein believes, is continuing to replace big, impersonal high schools with smaller schools that offer a sense of community and a variety of programs. Says Klein: "You want to create a really robust set of options."

Providing more choices is paying dividends for New York. In the past three years, the city has raised its on-time graduation rate from 44% to 50%, though how states measure such figures continues to spur debate. Five- and six-year graduation rates are also up. "We think it's powerfully important to increase all these rates," says Klein. "It may take a kid a couple of years longer, but if the kid gets the diploma, the economic consequences are huge."

Maisonet is thinking about a job in veterinary care and possibly college, but without all the support she has had at the YABC, it won't be easy to move on. When Maisonet suffered a late miscarriage in March, Smallhorne sent two outreach staff members to find her, and she was back in school two weeks later. "I love YABC," she says. "The teachers say, Come on, you have to graduate--we don't want you here no more. But I'm going to cry when I leave." *