Hampton High School is a Dropout Factory
A study done by a research team for Johns Hopkins University said there were 22 schools in Virginia that were “dropout factories” which meant that less than 60 percent of students graduated after four years at the school. One of those schools is Hampton High School in my hometown.
It really didn’t come as much of a shock to me. I always thought HHS was the rowdiest and most thugged-out school in the city. But the city of Hampton is taking the criticism pretty harshly. And they should. Because they only have four high schools, and one of them has been nationally labeled as a failure. If they were being graded, that means they get a 75% success rate. Which is a D, or it was when I went through school.
Hampton High School Students are on the Fail Train.
The Daily Press, the hometown paper, is making excuses for the city too. It is helping the students come up with excuses why the statistics are skewed or wrong. They want kids that decide they want to get a GED to count. Or people who drop out to pursue a technical degree (like on the job training?) to count. But they doesn’t count according to the simple study, and the city, the students and the paper are all huffy about it.
From the Daily Press here:
The story said 22 of the more than 1,670 bottom-rung schools were in Virginia.
Hampton High School is home of the Crabbers — and, according to the story, a dropout factory.
Robert Balfanz, lead researcher for the study by the Baltimore-based university, coined the label to describe schools where less than 60 percent of ninth-graders graduate four years later.
Balfanz conducted the study for The Associated Press, using ninth-grade enrollment data and 12th-grade graduation numbers collected by the U.S. Department of Education. He divided the number of graduates by the number of ninth-graders to calculate the rate.
According to the report, Hampton High’s average graduation rate was 55 percent for the three years he studied. Forty-five ninth-graders disappeared, earning the school the nickname “dropout factory.”
Of the 1,371 new ninth-graders who began school at Hampton High in 2000, 2001 and 2002, 277 dropped out, about 20 percent of the three combined freshman classes. The three classes had a combined graduation rate of 60.6 percent, counting only new incoming ninth-graders who completed school four years later.
Drewry, Hines and Roca know students who have withdrawn from school to pursue a general education development, or GED certificate. They spoke of students who left high school but continued to pursue technical or career training.
But they said their school is not a place where 5 out of 10 students “disappear.”
The story is so laughable because it has a ridiculous headline: “Students say Hampton High is door to success.” Right, tell yourselves whatever you have to. Maybe self-delusion will help those dropout rates climb back above the 60% mark. The story is also laughable because the paper only photographed non-black students. Hampton High School is predominantly black.
But the dropout rates wouldn’t have anything to do with race, would it? Blacks, or even whites, who drop out go on to earn “wonderful things” like a GED or technical training so they can dig ditches. Or be a telemarketer. Hampton is the telemarketing capital of the US, you know.
Schoolboard elections are tomorrow in Hampton. But it won’t matter who wins- Hampton City schools will continue to receive a D when it comes to success.
