The Astounding Depth of the Problem

by KYW's Mike DeNardo

The numbers paint a sobering picture.

"No more than 50 percent of the students graduate within four years of entering high school."  That's Dr. Ruth Curran Neild (right), a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University who has studied Philadelphia's dropout problem.

She says there are two ways to look at the figures: the annual dropout rate and the cohort rate.  The annual dropout rate is  the percentage of the student body that drops out each year -- roughly ten percent.  The cohort rate is the percentage of a freshman class that will ultimately graduate. The inverse of that cohort rate is the dropout rate. 
 
The latest figures from the class of 2005 show 58 percent of Philadelphia's freshmen graduating after six years, so the six-year dropout rate is 42 percent.

Philadelphia Youth Network president Laura Shubilla (right) has been watching Philadelphia's dropout rate for the last decade:

"Everybody's asking the question, what can we do to help resolve the dropout problem? We've been doing this for ten years. I can tell you, five years ago everybody wasn't asking that question.

"There were a lot of people who felt like it was an intractable problem that we couldn't do anything about.  And they wanted to stay away from it.  As soon as you brought that conversation up, you had a lot of people leave the table."

The dropout rate has been around the 45 percent mark for years. But Neild's most recent research shows the rate beginning to decline.

(Photos by KYW's Mike DeNardo)