Nearly one in five seniors left their high schools in the state’s 20 largest districts in 2003, state records show, and district officials acknowledge they had no accurate way of knowing whether former students finished school somewhere else or dropped out.
The findings of a Denver Post review of Colorado Department of Education figures and subsequent interviews with district officials, principals and students show a flawed and inconsistent student tracking system with no checks or balances from a state that relies mainly on faith.
Even within a single district, principals treat many students who stop showing up for class differently. In one Denver building that houses three high schools, principals use varying systems to find missing students. In Jefferson County, a spokesman said hundreds of students in the state’s largest school district cannot be accurately tracked.
“You see immediately how you can skew figures,” said William Moloney, the state’s commissioner of education. “Our tendency everywhere is to be a little soft on interpretation and leave a lot to local discretion.”
The implication, experts say, is that many more students may be dropping out of Colorado’s public high schools than the state reports. While state records show a graduation rate of 83 percent, other studies place the rate between 61 percent and 72 percent.
While the state defines how to calculate transfers and dropouts, schools are rarely audited to ensure the data’s credibility.
Jan Rose Petro, director of data and research at the Department of Education, said schools “do the best they can” when recording data. Still, she said, some districts “play around” with transfer and dropout numbers.
State officials have taken steps to address the tracking problems. In 2003, Colorado schools started giving each student a number so they can follow student progress.
In Westminster 50, almost a quarter of the district’s sophomore 2000-01 class left the district by transferring somewhere else. An additional 5 percent were recorded as dropouts. In Denver, only 4.5 percent of the juniors dropped out in the 2001-02 school year, records say, and 33 percent were classified as transfers outside the district.
And in Jefferson County, one in five seniors in the 2002-03 school year left the district, state education records show, and another 3 percent dropped out.
Rick Kaufman, the Jefferson County district’s spokesman, disputed the Department of Education numbers Thursday that show 1,593 out of 7,784 seniors left the district by transferring.
“There is a flaw in the system of tracking,” Kaufman said. “To us, that (transfer figure) seems extremely high, especially if we don’t have accurate data.”
Independent observers say that transfer rates in high schools appear inflated – especially when taking into account traditionally low reported dropout rates statewide.
“The problem with calling them transfers is that it implies that a student moves from school A to school B, and they know they went to school B,” said Van Schoales, executive vice president for education at the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
Under state law, students should be considered transfers only if another school requests their student records, indicating they have enrolled elsewhere, or if a parent signs a statement indicating a transfer.
In fact, Schoales said, many students being reported as transfers may be dropouts.
In its own study, the Children’s Campaign last year found that 39 percent of Colorado’s anticipated 2003 graduates left their original high school.
“There’s obviously an incentive to have higher transfer numbers than higher dropout numbers,” Schoales said.
Students, too, have noticed dramatic drops in student numbers as they progress in school.
Incoming freshman classes at Denver’s West High School number about 600, though senior classes are about half that, district figures show. The school reported a 2003 dropout rate of less than 2 percent.
Wayne Eckerling, DPS assistant superintendent, said his district does not keep a paper trail of transferred students. He questioned whether 33 percent of juniors transferred in 2001-02, as state figures indicate. Still, he said: “In reality, there are lots of kids leaving the district. We have gigantic movement. How would we get the resources to check if the student has enrolled in another district?”
A survey of principals showed wildly different methods of calculating whether a student was a transfer or a dropout.
At Colorado Springs’ District 11, officials said principals sometimes take students at their word when they say they’re leaving for another school.
At the Manual High School Educational Complex, which houses three schools in one building, one principal uses two people to find missing students. Another principal in the same building wishes he had that manpower but just sends a letter to the student’s home.
And at Denver’s George Washington High School, principal Mario Williams tapes a list of unaccounted-for students to a wall and asks other teenagers for information on their whereabouts.
To be sure, some students are still attending school after leaving their original high school. Harrison 2 in Colorado Springs has lost more than a third of a class in a year, partly because of military transfers.
Dozens of students have left public schools to attend La Academia, a private Denver middle/ high school, though few students there know if they were considered dropouts.
“I didn’t tell them where I was going,” said Tahnya Herrmann, 17, who attended Bear Creek High School in Jefferson County. “I never went to class, ever. … I thought I was better off dropping out.”
Under the new system of assigning individual numbers to students, people like Herrmann can be more easily tracked. Districts now submit dropout and transfer numbers electronically to the state.
Oliver Grenham, director of learning services for Westminster 50, said the new data will be a welcome change. “The information will be following the kids,” he said.
Denver Post computer-assisted reporting editor Jeffrey Roberts contributed to this report.
Staff writer Allison Sherry can be reached at 303-820-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com.
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
