A conventional high school experience — large cafeterias and classroom lectures combined with a healthy dose of social pressure – is not for everyone.

A total of 27 students left Concord High School in 2023 and 16 were considered dropouts out of about 1,500 students. It’s a worrisome number because school officials would like to reach zero.

“I think that people perceive the dropout rate as a failure of the system when in fact the system is a milestone in their career, it isn’t the end of the line,” said Kathleen Murphy, Concord school district’s superintendent.

Programs like Second Start in Concord provide an alternate path for students to receive a high school diploma and avoid being deemed a “dropout.”

Many of the students who enroll in Second Start’s alternative high school program come from backgrounds where education isn’t the highest immediate priority, according to Liz Graziano, Director of Second Start’s Alternative High School Program. They often have responsibilities at home that are too great to balance with a typical high school education.

Concord High administration can refer their students to Second Start from Grades 9-12 due to poor attendance, lack of progress, discipline issues, or a sense that the student might benefit from alternative modes of learning.

If Second Start agrees that the student is a good fit, they can enroll for half or full days and attend small classes to gain credit toward a diploma from their “sending school,” which is Concord High in most cases.

Close to 30 students are typically enrolled in the alternative high school, who otherwise could become dropouts.

The program offers an effective solution for students when the challenges of completing a traditional high school education become too great.

High schools have their own tools to keep students enrolled, including tutoring, mentoring and after-school programs, but studies show that efforts to reduce dropout rates have to start early.

This year, explained Murphy, the Concord School District signed more adult diplomas than usual, an estimated 15 to 20.

The quest to define “high school dropout”

Sixteen dropouts from Concord High School in 2023 is a scary number — one that concerned the Concord School Board at their meeting in June, just before the high school graduation ceremony.

Out of 27 students who left Concord High in the 2022-23 school year, sixteen were coded by the Department of Education as “dropouts.” The other eleven either transferred to a different school or began homeschooling, In one devastating case, the student died.

“Dropouts are, to some degree, defined locally,” said said Sandy Addis, the chairman of the National Dropout Prevention Center, which focuses “strictly on what schools can do to help students perform better and graduate.”

Most simply, said Addis, a dropout is a kid who started school in 9th grade and did not graduate from 12th grade.

In 2009, a New Hampshire law, SB 18, increased the legal high school dropout age from 16 to 18. This means that students are now legally bound to attend high school until age 18, and teenagers who want to leave school must enroll in an alternative learning program until they can legally leave.

All dropouts from the Concord School district are welcome and encouraged to return to Concord High. Older individuals who dropped out when they were younger can go to Second Start’s adult diploma program, receive their G.E.D., or participate in the district’s many alternate adult programs.

It gets more complicated to count these students who leave school and come back, earn their G.E.D.s elsewhere, or move to another district.

These nuances, and definitions surrounding“dropouts,” are complex and ever-changing.

Comparing dropout rates

In the greater Concord area, the four high schools with the highest dropout rates are Concord High, Merrimack Valley, Franklin High, and Pittsfield High.

When data from 2013 through 2022 are compared across these four schools, there are no obvious trends. From 2021 to 2022, all four schools experienced an increase in dropouts, but otherwise, peaks and valleys do not align.

Compared to other schools in Merrimack County, dropout rates like Franklin’s 12.7% in 2020 and Pittsfield’s 12.8% in 2022 raise questions about why numbers are so high in certain districts.

The median household income in Franklin and Pittsfield, which have the highest dropout rates, are $61,664 and $58,036, respectively, according to New Hampshire Employment Security. This is less than half of the median income in Bow, where dropout rates are below 1% almost every year.

The link between household income and dropouts is supported by the National Dropout Prevention Center, which presents on its website that students from low-income families have a dropout rate of 10%, while 1.6% of students from high-income families drop out.

The center conducted a related study that found a direct correlation between childhood trauma and non-graduation.

These trends indicate that a solution to high dropout rates has deep roots in socioeconomic disparities and their associated challenges. But, not everyone needs a high school degree to have a fulfilling life. Maybe, shifting the focus to what happens after a student drops out is more effective, Addis suggested.

Tracking every student

Since 2013, Concord High School’s lowest dropout count was three students in 2015, and their high was 14 in 2018, which was 3.8% of the graduating class.

The 16 dropouts in 2023 stand out compared to these numbers. Kaileen Chilauskas, assistant principal at Concord High, attempted to explain this peak.

“I feel like this is a bit of a brief inflation because during COVID, we were reluctant to drop anyone, so we really held on to them within our systems because we knew that there were so many other challenges that were a part of our world,” said Chilauskas.

During more conventional years, students who stopped attending classes might have left the school district’s system at age 18. But, due to virtual classes and extenuating circumstances during the pandemic, the district kept many kids in their system until they aged out at 22, holding on to hope that these students would succeed with more normalcy.

Chilauskas believes this is a potential explanation for the startling numbers in 2023.

Of the 16 dropouts from Concord High this year, one was a 10th grader, five were 11th graders, and 10 were 12th graders.

Five of the 16 became homeschooled but were still coded in the Department of Education’s system as a “dropout,” according to Chilauskas.

That leaves eleven dropouts. Superintendent Murphy reported that two of these 11 are at New Hampshire Job Corps Center, where they are receiving free career training for their futures in the workforce.

Chilauskas told stories of the remaining nine. One student, she said, moved to Concord from Detroit and enrolled in Concord High as a transfer student. On the first day of school, he did not show up and he has not attended Concord High ever since.

Concord’s administration called his old school district and attempted to track him down, but was unsuccessful, with no idea where this student had gone.

He, too, counts as a dropout.

“We had to, you know, own that dropout number, and he never stepped foot in a classroom at Concord High,” said Chilauskas.

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