4-year diploma rate lags in Hub

Nearly half of Boston students fail to graduate from the city's regular public high schools in four years, according to a new Boston school system report that examines the city's growing dropout problem.

The 53 percent four-year graduation rate pales in comparison to the state average and even lags behind the average rate of the state's urban school systems. The report, which the school system released to the Globe yesterday, also gives an unprecedented glimpse into which students are most likely to drop out.

The report, based on a 10-month study, found that eighth-graders who had spotty attendance, failed more than one class, or were more than two years older than their classmates were more likely to drop out of high school; 34 percent of eighth-graders in one or more of those groups graduated from high school in four years. Among ninth-graders, 31 percent who failed at least one high school course in English, math, science, or history graduated in four years.

"The numbers are devastating," said Kim Janey, deputy project director for Massachusetts Advocates for Children. "The district has to figure out how we help and support these kids before they get off track."

Other students likely to drop out were those with disabilities who were educated separately from their nondisabled peers and those not fluent in English who entered the school system for the first time during high school.

The report found that 53 percent of Boston public school students graduate after four years from the high schools that do not require an entrance exam. Statewide, 62 percent of urban high school students graduate on time; that figure is comparable to Boston's four-year graduation rate of 59 percent when the city's three exam schools are included. The state's average four-year graduation rate for all high schools is 80 percent.

In 2005-06, more than 1,900 students, or 9.1 percent of the city's high school population, quit school, an annual dropout rate that is up more than 25 percent from 2001-02. Most of Boston's dropouts were black or Hispanic boys. Of the students who did not graduate after four years but remained in school, 27 percent graduated in their fifth or sixth year; most of the rest ended up dropping out.

School officials said the new study offers the district a chance to rescue students who are at risk of dropping out before they quit. The school system currently has no comprehensive method of identifying likely dropouts and providing them extra support. Instead, the system relies on the fragmented efforts of the loosely organized network of alternative programs and schools, which educate students who have trouble in regular schools.

On average, 18 percent of students enrolled in alternative programs graduate within six years, and there are not enough alternative schools to serve all the students likely to drop out, the study found.

"There literally is no ownership across the board," said former superintendent Michael G. Contompasis, now special assistant to Superintendent Carol Johnson, during a School Committee meeting this week when preliminary data were released. "The city and school district has a moral obligation to address the needs of these kids."

Johnson and Mayor Thomas M. Menino will discuss the findings today at a community forum sponsored by Freedom House, in the first of a series of meetings over the next two months to seek community input on solutions. Business and community leaders say the school system should focus as much on prevention and intervention as it does on bringing dropouts back into schools.

Last year, Boston began a citywide effort to contact every student who had dropped out the previous year and persuade each one to reenroll. Of the 1,600 dropouts, 81 reenrolled last year; of those, 12 graduated or got their GED, 18 are still in school, and 51 have dropped out again.

Johnson said the study's findings will help the school system develop new programs and strategies to help students most at risk of dropping out. She plans to present her recommendations to the School Committee by January.

The school system, Johnson said, needs to find ways to increase middle school attendance and intervene as early as elementary school if students are chronically absent. Students should also be allowed more opportunities to make up courses they have failed so they do not fall further behind.

In Memphis, Johnson created ninth-grade academies within high schools with the highest dropout rates so that all students could receive more attention in a smaller environment during their first year.

"We don't want to just design schools that warehouse students," Johnson said. "We want quality education for them."

To conduct the study, researchers looked at the students who did not graduate within four years, then examined their past academic performance to compile the list of factors that contributed to their failure.

In 2006, the last year for which data were collected, the education of nearly 43 percent of Boston's approximately 20,000 high school students included at least one of the factors that made them a risk to drop out.

The school system should consider identifying potential dropouts as early as the third grade, said Elizabeth Reilinger, chairwoman of the Boston School Committee, by more closely tracking students' attendance and reading skills, which predict future failure.

"We need to break that pattern early on," Reilinger said. "It's important as a system that we get beyond wringing our hands."

Davonn Brown, a student at the Boston Day and Evening Academy, said he thought about dropping out in middle school because he was still in eighth grade at 16.

He said he was held back in first grade for clowning around in class instead of getting his work done. He flunked again in the sixth grade because of poor attendance. By eighth grade, many of his friends had already dropped out.

"It was degrading, because I felt out of place," Brown said. "It was my pride. I was like: 'Yo, I've already been held back. If I stay in school now, I'm going to be 20-something by the time I graduate.' I don't want to be that old sitting around like that."

But his older sister, who was in college, persuaded him to stay in school. He enrolled at Boston Day and Evening, a Roxbury alternative high school designed for overage students and former dropouts.

Brown, now 18, made up three years of work in two years and is on track to graduate in June. He plans to apply to Harvard University and said he wants to study business, black history, quantum physics, philosophy, and political science.

"I know it's not going to be easy," Brown said. "I have to prove that I'm Harvard material."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.