Schools for at-risk students need more time

Want to serve at-risk students in Texas?

Under Texas Education Agency accountability standards, you'll have to maintain a dropout rate no higher than 20 percent, based on the number of students enrolled in one year who make it through to the next.

We’re all for accountability, but it's time to get real.

At schools like Austin Can! — a charter academy in the state’s capital city that focuses on at-risk students — students have often already dropped out once before. They’re often far behind in credits. And they often are challenged with obstacles — work, children or illness, for instance — that make it difficult to devote a full-time effort to their studies.

But as currently written, the standards are unforgiving.

“Once a student comes to our schools, we can’t deny them — it doesn’t matter if they had horrific attendance, if they are 20 and have one credit,” Toni Templeton, of the state charter association, told The New York Times. “If we have them for one day, if they don’t stay with us and return the following fall, they are a dropout.”

A school that fails to graduate enough students for two years or more can have its accreditation revoked. At least 13 charter schools in Texas are facing that fate.

Now a bill introduced by state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte would give schools that work with at-risk students more time — and exempt older students from the dropout calculations. “It would continue to hold them to a high standard but would make it an appropriate standard for those who support a majority population who are off track or who have dropped out all together,” Allen told The Times.

There are opponents. Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor at the University of Texas worries that the measure could turn dropout recovery charters into “holding bins” for schools to dump their troubled students.

Certainly, provisions should be made to prevent such consequences. But nonetheless, something must change.

Punishing schools that have the audacity to work with the most at-risk students isn’t accountability, it’s lunacy.