Who Are The Dropouts?

 
by KYW's Mike DeNardo 
 
Is there a typical Philadelphia dropout?

"A lot of times people try to say, 'Oh, it's bad kids that are dropping out.'  Well, our data is just not showing that. There's a lot of kids from all walks of life."

Courtney Collins-Shapiro (right) heads the Philadelphia school district's Multiple Pathways to Graduation office:

"Fully 60 percent of Latino boys are dropping out without a diploma. And African-American boys aren't far behind them."

And it's not just boys:

"White girls, Asian girls, Latino girls -- the girls are still dropping out at a 50-percent rate. So there's no one group that's really knocking it out of the park in terms of graduation."

Typically, students drop out in 9th or 10th grade. She says that each year in Philadelphia, about 5,000 students attend school less than half the time, and they'll make up the bulk of the next year's dropouts.

Neighborhood high schools in low-income sections of the city can have four-year dropout rates topping 60 percent, says Johns Hopkins researcher Ruth Curran Neild:

"When you look at the dropout rate in Philadelphia, you can see that it affects everybody. It affects every neighborhood, it affects every group, and it affects males and females. So that's one way to think about it -- no one can say 'It's not my problem.' It is our problem in every section of the city."

(File photo: "The Bowery Boys," 1938, Warner Bros.)