4/25/2008
Discussing the dropouts
Symposium explains new research about poor graduation rates in Texas and beyond
BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff
Researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin will present their recent findings that Texas' public school accountability system directly contributes to lower graduation rates during a free symposium on the Rice campus. Texas' system has been the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
At the 2008 Hazel Creekmore Symposium, 4:30 to 6 p.m. April 29 in Rice's Janice and Robert McNair Hall, the researchers will explain how Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language students.
"Many of these losses are in fact avoidable," said Linda McSpadden McNeil. "They are the result of decisions made by school administrators to raise their schools' accountability ratings through the loss of their weakest students, who come to be seen as liabilities to the school ratings rather than as youth to be educated."
The symposium comes at an opportune time as America's Promise Alliance just released findings that under NCLB, high school graduation rates are lower than 50 percent in 17 of the 50 largest U.S. cities.
"This is an issue of critical significance for our state and for the nation," McNeil said. "We want to be able to bring this discussion back to Texas, where this system began, and involve community leaders, teachers, researchers and parents in solving the dropout crisis."
At the symposium, McNeil will be joined by her fellow researchers Judy Radigan and Eileen Coppola, research scientists at the Center for Education, and Julian Vasquez Heilig of UT-Austin. Larry Faulkner, president of Houston Endowment Inc., will offer a welcome, and Neal Lane, the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and senior fellow in science and technology at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, will introduce the study and its researchers. Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, will serve as the respondent.
The symposium will be held in McNair Hall's Shell Auditorium and a reception will follow in the Ley Student Center's Kelley Lounge. The symposium is free and open to the public. The event is co-sponsored by the Baker Institute and the Rice University Center for Education.
The annual Hazel Creekmore Symposium was established in 1993 by a gift from the Houston Endowment to Rice's Center for Education to provide resources on children and schooling for Houston-area teachers, Rice faculty and students and the larger community. The gift honors Hazel Creekmore '27, a Houston teacher.
More information on the symposium is available at http://centerforeducation.rice.edu/creekmore/.
