First in a three-day series.

BY COLIN HICKEY

Staff Writer

High school dropout.

It is a phrase synonymous with failure.

Certainly, high schools don't want to be associated with the term. A high dropout rate is seen as a black mark, a form of failure on the high school's part.

In Maine, about one out of every four students who enters public high school drops out before completing his or her graduation requirements, said Cheryl Saliwanchik-Brown of the University of Maine. Saliwanchik-Brown wrote a dissertation on high school dropouts recently to earn her doctorate in education.

What that means is that more than 25 percent of the students who enrolled in each of those respective schools did not receive a diploma four years later. The national average is about 33 percent, Saliwanchik-Brown said.

But rates vary dramatically from high school to high school.

In this area, Cony High School (28.9 percent) of Augusta, Carrabec High School (27.6 percent) of North Anson and Gardiner High School (25.4 percent) each exceeded that average for the Class of 2005-06.

Monmouth Academy (3.3 percent), Madison Area Memorial High School (4.4 percent) and Messalonskee High School (6.1 percent) of Oakland are on the other end of that dropout spectrum.

What the numbers do not reveal, however, is the complexity surrounding the dropout issue, including the definition itself, or more specifically the definition to which Maine now subscribes. A change was made just last year to align Maine with the definition used by the National Governors' Association in determining the number of students who fail to walk across the commencement stage.

A student who drops out of high school in favor of pursuing a high school diploma through an adult education program, for example, is classified as a dropout, even if that student earns a degree the same year as his classmates.

The same holds true for a student who leaves high school to earn a General Educational Development (GED) degree or to be home schooled -- an option that has Maine Department of Education approval.

School superintendents and principals argue that this expanded definition of dropout unfairly inflates the problem, especially for schools that have ready access to adult education programs.

Saliwanchik-Brown, though, makes the opposite argument: She warns that the dropout formula used may understate the problem.

"What we don't know," she said, "is how many kids don't even start high school. GED centers are starting to see some 15-year-olds. If nobody tracks them down and they turn 16, legally they don't have to go to school any more."

A former teacher certified for grades K-12, Saliwanchik-Brown recently completed her dissertation on teenage GED recipients. She chose to pursue that line of study, she said, in part by what she experienced as a public school teacher.

"I was shocked by the inequities that I saw with kids at risks and the ones falling through the cracks."

What she has found, she said, is great disparities among high schools in their attitude toward at-risk students.

"I talk to a lot of high school people," she said, "and there are high schools that really care about this population, and there are some that really don't. It depends on the district."

Why the difference?

Cony principal James Anastasio knows the dropout numbers are high at his school in comparison to Monmouth Academy, which is about 25 miles away.

He also knows that the difference involves multiple variables.

"Certainly there is not a simple answer to that," he said. "If it was simple, people would have solved the problem long ago."

Socio-economic level, however, is one factor often cited by educators. A student from a family struggling to pay the bills each week often does not get the educational support at home that classmates from wealthier households typically receive.

"For many of these students," he said, "education is not their highest priority. Daily living and the trial and tribulations associated with that are."

Students from impoverished families, Saliwanchik-Brown said, often feel alienated from other students, and the significance of that lack of connection is monumental.

Waterville School Superintendent Eric L. Haley will attest to that. Back when he was principal of Waterville Senior High School, Haley would play "the red dot" game with his faculty.

The idea was simple: The names of every student in the school would be written on scraps of paper and taped to a wall. Teachers and other staff were then asked to place a red dot next to the name of every student they had talked to on a personal level at some point.

Haley said each year the names of eight to 10 students would have no red dots by them.

These were the disengaged students, the at-risk teenagers and, almost invariably, the ones who become high school dropouts, he said.

"To me the bottom line is every one of these kids needs to have a relationship with somebody at the school," Haley said. "If they are disengaged with the academic process, school is just an awful thing that they have to participate in every day."

Jamie Fasteau, director of policy with the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education, said communities that struggle economically often are hard-pressed to fund their schools adequately.

This can affect the quality of the administrative and teaching staff, which in turn can impact the quality of education delivered.

Still, Fasteau said it's wrong to assume that low incomes always lead to high dropout rates.

"It's important to note that there are schools in those situations that are succeeding with their students," she said.

This point is supported by the data on central Maine high schools.

More than half the students at Carrabec High School qualified for free or reduced school lunch -- an indicator of economic hardship -- in the current school year.

Yet while Carrabec's dropout rate for the 2005-06 class was nearly 28 percent, neighboring Madison High School, with nearly 60 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced school lunch, had a dropout rate under 5 percent for the same graduation year.

Reason for concern

High school dropouts are nothing new.

Haley said society used to consider the phenomenon a non-issue.

"Nobody cared about dropouts 50 years ago," he said, "because they dropped out and went to work."

And back in those days, he said, many, if not most, who quit school could get jobs in the mill that paid a decent wage and good benefits.

That is no longer true.

"It is a serious problem," Haley said of those who never obtain a high school degree or GED. "They end up drawing off the welfare system because it is the only way they can survive."

Fasteau of the Alliance for Excellent Education said even high school dropouts that go on to obtain a GED in general don't fare as well in the work world.

"Students who receive a GED have future economic conditions and job prospects more comparable to high school dropouts than they do to those with a high school diploma," she said.

The Alliance has studied the economic impact of high school dropouts in every state.

That impact in Maine includes an estimated $1 billion in lost lifetime earnings for the approximately 4,000 students who dropped out in 2007.

The Alliance also claims that Maine would save more than $48.6 million in health-care costs over the lifetimes of each class of dropouts had those students earned their degrees.

S. Nash Callahan, a junior at Cony High School, sees the problem at the most basic level.

"You can barely get a job without a high school diploma these days," he said. "That almost forces kids to stay in high school."

Along with economic repercussions, the dropout rate is of concern from an accountability standpoint.

Fasteau said testing results had been the only accountability measure for schools on the federal level.

This led to what some educators called the "push-out phenomenon."

Fasteau said some schools would rid themselves of at-risk students -- typically low-scoring ones -- in order to improve their standardized test scores.

Keeping an eye on both measures, she said, enables education leaders to detect such abuses and take appropriate actions.

The best high schools, Fasteau said, are the ones that offer flexibility and creativity in their programming and a variety of ways and techniques to meet the learning needs of students.

"Schools are responsible for getting all students to a diploma," she said, "and that means creating a school around the students' needs."

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com