Community forum helps illuminate the dropout epidemic — and identify solutions

Education leaders in Carlsbad, N.M., were proud when the America's Promise Alliance named their city one of the nation's “100 Best Communities for Young People.”

But they also knew — all too well — that they had a lot of work to do to make sure that was true for every child in their community.

Nearly a quarter of students in the four-year cohort scheduled to graduate from the district’s schools in 2009 didn't do so. Just 82 percent of Carlsbad's Caucasian students were graduating on time — and only 67 percent of the city's Hispanic students could say the same thing. And even among those who did graduate — and who were headed to college afterward — problems abounded: Nearly half had to take remedial coursework to be adequately prepared for college-level academics.

Alarmed by the sobering statistics, Superintendent Sheri Williams convened a team in the fall of 2009 to seek ways to engage the community in the graduation challenge. Those efforts culminated on May 8, 2010, when 150 diverse stakeholders from the community sat down at the Carlsbad Graduation Summit to discuss the critical issues facing their community’s graduation crisis.

"The national dropout issue has been labeled as a 'silent epidemic' because people are generally not willing to speak out," Williams wrote in a report on the summit. "However, there was no silence in the room during the Carlsbad community conversation."

Three priorities emerged from the debate and discussion:

• Keeping students safe, supported and healthy.

• Creating incentives for ambitious reforms that would raise the bar and reward excellence.

• Creating innovative community solutions to remove barriers that impede student progress.

Today, the district says it's capitalizing on the momentum from the summit by providing regular reports of "celebrations and challenges" to the summit's participants, elected officials and the media.

"In the end, we hope our work will result in the development of new local leaders who are willing to step forward to assist in the design and implementation of community actions that will best respond to the graduation challenge," Williams wrote.

And already, they're seeing the fruits of those efforts: Those who have offered plans, programs and old-fashioned elbow grease to meet the summit objectives include the town's mayor, the local chapter of the United Way, a local mental health center, the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce.

And just this week, the district announced that it would partner with several of these organizations in a program called Adolescent Intervention for Recovery and Resiliency — an effort to address multiple factors that can influence dropout rates, including academics, interpersonal skills and family issues.

“We’re not content to ‘admire’ the graduation challenge,” Williams told NoDropouts.org. “We’re doing everything we can to change the culture of low expectations and create a new college-going culture in Carlsbad. It’s hard work... but it can be done.”