Portland's high dropout rate reveals illusion of success at big high schools (Diplomas denied, Part 1) | OregonLive.com:
by Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian
Jamie Francis/The OregonianMegan Brophy, who dropped out of Portland'™s Cleveland High early in her junior year, is among the 1,300 students in Portland'™s class of 2011 who failed to earn a diploma in four years. As was the case with other dropouts from Portland Public Schools, she had to find her own way after no one from Cleveland reached out to try to get her back in school.
Portland Public Schools turns out more than 1,100 dropouts every year, largely because leaders have hidden that rampant failure from those best positioned to prevent it, an analysis by The Oregonian has found.
That consigns one of every three young people who enter a Portland high school to a life of reduced earnings and opportunity. In Portland's class of 2011 alone, 1,300 students -- 35 percent of the class -- failed to earn a diploma in four years.
Most of them never will.
The single biggest factor behind the sky-high dropout rate? Oregon's largest school district shuffles struggling students by the hundreds into a network of low-profile, mostly unaccountable alternative schools. There, out of sight of their former teachers, principals and classmates, at least 80 percent drop out.
That disconnect between the district's nine big high schools and the fate of students who
by The Associated Press
Some students at elementary schools in Mount Vernon are walking or riding bikes to school to determine what happens when the district eliminates bus stops within a mile of schools
