THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 29, 1995 TAG: 9512290503
SECTION: NORTH CAROLINA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
More students are dropping out of North Carolina schools, and some educators say that's because there's no pressure for them to graduate.
``Whatever is being pitched is what people pay attention to,'' said Olivia Oxendine, who oversees dropout prevention programs statewide. ``Right now the pitch is for higher standards and discipline. Dropouts - even kids who could fairly easily be persuaded to stay - are no longer the focus.''
That includes students such as Robin Gooch, who would have been a likely target for dropout prevention a few years ago, given her past success in school.
An young woman with an interest in criminal justice, Gooch was a cheerleader, a softball player and a student council member at Franklinton High.
But when she transferred to Cary High her junior year, she was unable to crack the cheerleading squad or make the softball team. Confused, annoyed and somewhat overwhelmed on a larger campus, she quit going to school.
Gooch, now 18, thus became part of a growing number of students who drop out. Some statistics indicate that one of every three freshmen fail to reach the end of their senior year, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Thursday.
Even the most conservative calculations of the state's dropout rate shows that increases in each of the past three years have all but wiped out the progress that school officials touted in the early 1990s.
``It's frustrating to say the least,'' said Bob Etheridge, the state school superintendent. ``I would quickly add, however, that achievement during the same time period is clearly going up.''
As Gooch continued to cut classes - and to conceal it from her parents by catching the computer-generated phone call the school made to her house - it became clear to her that no one was feelingpressed to stop her.
``No one seemed to care much when I told them I wasn't coming back,'' Gooch said. ``Later on I even asked to come back after I decided I had made a mistake, but they told me I was too far behind to catch up.''
Gooch eventually did go back to school at Wake Technical Community College. She earned her high school diploma earlier this month and plans on continuing her education for at least two more years.
More than 16,000 students across the state dropped out of high school last year. Most fail to see the value in a diploma and find little of interest in their school routines.
School officials deny that teachers don't care, but it is clear that reducing dropout rates is no longer the priority it was only a few years ago.
Shortly after Etheridge took office in 1989, he announced that cutting the dropout rate was the schools' highest priority. Not one of his initiatives survives today.
Schools have reduced their dropout rates on paper - regardless of whether a student stays in school.
Statewide, hundreds of students - and possibly thousands - are considered transfer students because they say they are going to enroll in the local community college.
Some, such as Gooch, successfully complete the high school program. Others never attend a class.
``We try to keep track of them as best we can, but we don't know what happens to everyone after they leave here,'' said Vann Langston, who oversees curriculum for Johnston County schools. ``It's a pretty big crack in the system and kids do fall through.''
One indication of how many youths fall out of the education system is given by the retention rate for high schools.
The measure compares how many students start ninth grade with the number who are still around on graduation day. It assumes that the number of students who transfer out of school during that time is about equal to the number who transfer into the school. At the same time, North Carolina schools have been undergoing dramatic growth for several years.
North Carolina schools retain about 65 percent of the students who start ninth grade through graduation. Dropout rates, on the other hand, suggest more than 80 percent of the state's students complete high school. MEMO: IMPACT ON COLLEGES
Community colleges are under pressure to educate school dropouts. Story
on Page B3.
KEYWORDS: DROPOUT RATE by CNB