Teachers should expose students to college and graduate school opportunities as early as middle school and help students one on one more often. High schools should offer internships and job training that would make classes relevant. And schools need to hire teachers who come from diverse backgrounds so they can connect better with students.
Nearly 400 middle and high school students from a variety of Boston public schools packed into a cafeteria at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury yesterday to give Superintendent Carol Johnson those suggestions and other ideas on how to prevent students from quitting school.
Many of the students were former dropouts who returned to school this year. Others are at risk of dropping out.
"Don't just say, 'Too bad, you're failing' and go onto the next kid," Domingo Ortiz, 19, said in an interview. He enrolled at Boston Adult Technical Academy this fall, six months after being expelled from another school. "Teachers here, they listen. They sit down with you and get to know you, and can relate to things that happened in your past without judgment."
Johnson convened the meeting, the first of four community forums on dropout prevention, in response to the city's dismal four-year graduation rate.
A recent school system study reported that only 53 percent of students in regular Boston high schools graduate in four years. Last year, 1,900 students left.
Likely dropouts include students with frequent absences or course failures in the eighth or ninth grade, non-English speakers who enter the school system in the middle of high school, and special education students educated in isolated classrooms, the study concluded.
Johnson said she wants to hear from the community, particularly students, before formulating her plan to tackle the problem. "We need to learn from their experiences," she said. "How do we support them now that they're back so they can graduate?"
She is considering three alternative high school models, all with longer school days, to help at-risk students.
One would allow students ages 16 to 17 who are two or more years behind to accumulate credits quickly; it would also offer social services and intensive emotional support.
Another would target 18- to 20-year-olds who need less than a year of courses to graduate; students would work at their own pace, and classes would extend into the evenings for students who work during the day.
A third model would target immigrants and offer intensive English and academic support.
Some students, though, said keeping them in school is as simple as principals and teachers paying more attention.
Jose Manuel Baez, 16, who is repeating the ninth grade at Brook Farm Business and Service Career Academy in West Roxbury, used to cut school last year because he was depressed after the deaths of his grandparents.
Things changed this year when his teachers and principal got him more involved in the school.
"It motivates me to stay in school, to come to school every day, because I have a priority," Baez said. "I'm almost the oldest kid in the ninth grade. Everybody looks at me like the leader, so I have to prove to them I can do it."
