Dropped out? No, pushed out

Being driven out of schools is a human rights issue, one that local youth activists are trying to address.

by Wendy Harris

Like many 9th graders, Tiffany Burgos was excited when she entered Kensington High School for Business, Finance, and Entrepreneurship. She looked forward to her classes, relished the opportunity to study new subjects, and wanted to start the process of preparing for college.

But it wasn’t long before Burgos became disengaged. The curriculum seemed redundant – like warmed-over middle school, she said. And she became a victim of incessant bullying by a female classmate.

She complained about the bullying to the principal, who did nothing, Burgos said. In 10th grade, when she got into a fight with her tormenter, she wound up in the District’s discipline pipeline, unable to re-enter Kensington, but not assigned elsewhere due to repeated procedural delays.

So she stopped going to school at all.

Technically, Burgos is a dropout. But is she actually a “pushout?”

A national push

Nationally, there is a growing movement to reframe the dropout issue as a denial of basic human rights to millions of young people, primarily those of color in urban schools that graduate barely half their students. A campaign called Dignity in Schools (DSC), which so far includes 200 organizations, is based on the belief that “too many students are denied educational opportunities” and “are pushed out of school by degrading environments and harsh disciplinary policies that undermine their learning.”

The District’s official dropout rate still hovers around 40 percent, and students like Burgos are lining up to reclassify themselves as pushouts. The local organizing group Youth United for Change (YUC) last year created a chapter targeted specifically to this student population, and Burgos is now one of 110 members. 

Dignity in Schools, which is circulating a national resolution and lobbying Congress as it works to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, defines a pushout as a student who feels forced out of school not just due to harsh discipline, but because of unsupportive teachers and staff, overcrowding, lack of safety, rigid test-driven curriculum, inadequate resources, and lack of student support services. 

Academic factors loom large. “There have been growing links between high-stakes testing and pushout,” said Liz Sullivan, education program director for the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (NESRI).

According to the Advancement Project’s 2010 report Test, Punish, and Push Out: How “Zero Tolerance” and High Stakes Testing Funnel Youth Into the School-To-Prison Pipeline, the increased use of standardized tests and exit exams and the higher stakes attached to them have greatly impacted the pushout problem. Pennsylvania doesn’t have an exit exam, but is preparing to implement a series of subject tests students must pass to graduate.

Students embarrassed and discouraged because they don’t do well in school often act out until misbehavior causes them to be suspended, expelled, or referred to an alternative school. According to the report, such students are likely to get into additional trouble and fall off course academically, thus being pushed out.