Event Will Highlight Rising High School Dropout Rate

The number of students who drop out of city high schools each year is rising steadily, to more than 21,000 students a year according to the latest figures, a nonprofit group will argue today at a press conference outside City Hall, though another method of calculating the dropout rate shows that it is declining.

The group, Directions For Our Youth, is holding a summit on the dropout problem this Friday, the second such summit to be held in New York City and one of the first in a series taking place this year in several American cities and all 50 states. A national group founded by Secretary of State Powell, the America's Promise Alliance, is sponsoring the summits.

The executive director of Directions For Our Youth, Cary Goodman, said that despite several entreaties by his group, the city Department of Education is refusing to sponsor the event or to have its logo grace a postcard advertising it. The city is providing a keynote speaker, the deputy mayor who oversees the education department, Dennis Walcott, and six city education officials are set to attend.

In other cities and states, education officials are sponsoring and organizing the summits. The lead organizer for a New York State dropout summit scheduled to happen this fall is Governor Spitzer's director of education policy, Duffy Palmer, Mr. Palmer said yesterday.

The group, which is supported by local and national sponsors ranging from the Hispanic Federation to CVS and State Farm Insurance, also asked the Department of Education and City Hall to help coordinate and offer space for today's press conference, but the requests were denied, Mr. Goodman said.

He said the snub follows a year of frustration. After a first summit last year attracted the interest of Mr. Walcott as well as attention from state and city elected officials, the city allocated more than $4 million to dropout prevention initiatives.

But, as Directions For Our Youth began to implement its programs, the department backed away, saying they were "offensive" because they painted New York City schools in a bad light, Mr. Goodman said. The money stream has also been recommended for elimination next year in the mayor's proposed budget.

One program Directions For Our Youth pitched was a calendar for parents called "Graduation is the Destination," highlighting important dates such as when to sign up for free tutoring, how many credits it takes to graduate, and when to take Regents exams required for graduation.

It also included facts running along the bottom of each calendar page, including the number of dropouts from city schools every year and the high number of schools designated failing.

Another was a series of radio advertisements that would have urged parents to attend parent-teacher conferences and take advantage of tutoring.

The latest New York City figures show the number of dropouts each year rose to 21,929 in the 2005–2006 school year from 19,982 two years before. The number of students in high school overall has also been rising, but at a slower pace, and so the dropout rate in this calculation is also rising, to 6.9% in 2006 from 6.3% two years earlier. Calculated a different way, as a proportion of those who entered a class as ninth graders, the dropout rate is falling, to 14.6% of the class of 2006 from 16.3% of the class of 2004.

The second figures have been cited by Mayor Bloomberg as a success that matches a rising graduation rate, which is now at 60%.

A new program introduced in 2005, called the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation, has been credited with making those changes.

Mr. Walcott, who is the keynote speaker at the summit this year, cited the office as an example of why Mr. Goodman's concern about the city's commitment is misplaced.

On the question of sponsorship, Mr. Walcott pointed to his own attendance two years in a row and said, "There are summits that take place in the city every day. We can't be cosponsors of every summit that is held."

A spokeswoman for the department, Melody Meyer, said two officials declined invitations to attend the summit, while six are coming.

She said the radio advertisements and the calendars were denied funding because they were not direct services to students and schools, as the City Council had required.

"Radio ads are not what we were paying for," the education committee chair, Robert Jackson, confirmed.