The Warning Signs

In this report, Mike DeNardo looks at the warning signs that indicate a child may drop out.

by KYW's Mike DeNardo

Can we predict which kids will drop out of high school? The warning signs emerge as early as sixth grade, says researcher Ruth Curran Neild (right) of Johns Hopkins University:

"I would call them signals -- red flags -- that students are sending up, almost as if they're waving their hands: 'I'm on the path to dropping out. Help me, here!' "

Among those warning signs: failing math or English for the year, or attending school less than 80 percent of the time.  Neild says there's a 75-percent chance a sixth-grader with any of those warning signs will drop out of high school.

The Philadelphia School District has been piloting a sixth-grade indicators project at the Jay Cooke and Feltonville schools that provides real time data to help administrators identify which students are on their way to dropping out -- and gets them the tutoring or outside services they may need.
 
Courtney Collins-Shapiro heads the district's Multiple Pathways to Graduation office:

"A lot of the young people who drop out of school are not just, like, one day they decide to drop out. There are a lot of issues. Whether it's that they're in foster care, they've had brushes with the law, whether it's, 'I've got children of my own.' A lot of times it's that adults in their lives have failed them."

(File photo #1 by KYW's Ed Fischer.  Photo #2 by KYW's Mike DeNardo)