Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN — Texas has 185 high schools that are hemorrhaging students fast enough to be called "dropout factories" in a new national report.

San Antonio has 15 of them.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who did the study for the Associated Press, applied that label to high schools with an attrition rate of at least 40 percent — which amounted to one in 10 high schools.

The report's release coincides with a Texas study by the San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association showing a 34 percent statewide attrition rate for the 2006 graduating class.

"This is the time bomb. This is the tsunami that started already," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, who is on the Senate Education Committee.

"If you look at our demographics, we have got to solve this problem," she said.

As a group, Hispanics have the highest dropout rate in Texas, some 45 percent, according to the IDRC report. Hispanics also make up the largest percentage of the state's 4.6 million public school students.

State officials said they have increased funding for dropout prevention, including $25 million a year for a new initiative lawmakers approved last spring, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.

"It's a huge problem for everybody, particularly schools with high mobility and a high percentage of kids who live in poverty," said Kathy Bruck, Harlandale's executive director of curriculum and instruction.

Bruck said ninth grade is the crucial turning point and her district is making progress in getting kids over that hump. The district's McCollum High School made the "dropout factory" list.

She said kids are going to school during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break and the summer to make up failed classes or missing credits to avoid repeating the ninth grade.

About 200 of the roughly 600 ninth-graders at Harlandale High School and a similar number of McCollum's 550 ninth-graders were held back two years ago. Last year about 100 repeated ninth grade at each school.

This year, the number of ninth-graders held back dropped to 42 at Harlandale and 51 at McCollum.

"It's taking superhuman effort to get there, but it will get easier because you're building a culture of success," Bruck said. "The biggest thing that hurts us when you work at high schools that are high-poverty and high-minority is a lack of hope. We're building a belief system so the kids know they can be successful."

San Antonio's largest district, Northside ISD, had two of its nine high schools labeled dropout factories. The schools — Holmes and Jay — have higher populations of poor and minority students than the others.

"Those schools are the ones with the biggest challenges," said Northside superintendent John Folks, who doesn't think the study did enough to take things like mobility into account.

"There are a lot of factors that need to be taken into consideration, but I will never negate the dropout problem," he said.

Sara McAndrew, Northside's director of secondary instruction, said the district is spending extra money provided by the Legislature on keeping kids in school. The effort includes extra class time before school to help kids catch up on credits, graduation coaches — counselors who focus on freshman and seniors — and a clerk at each high school to track down dropouts.

The term "dropout factory" is accurate, said IDRA Director Maria "Cuca" Robledo Montecel, whose group has been tracking Texas dropouts for 22 years.

About 70 percent of the 2.7 million students who have left school over that time are Hispanic or African American, she said.

"One of the things that happens in this state and across the nation is that we are not really honest about what needs to be done," Robledo Montecel said.

Schools plan for a 30 percent student attrition rate when hiring teachers, developing curriculum and building new schools, she said. The 134,676 students who entered high school as freshmen but who did not graduate with their class in 2006 would have cost about $808 million in classroom space, additional teachers, labs, guidance counselors and textbooks, she said.

One district clearly affected by a high mobility rate is Lackland ISD, one of only three school districts in Texas located on a military base. Stacey Jr./Sr. High School on Lackland AFB has about 140 high school students and a stellar reputation for academic achievement.

Still, the school was labeled a dropout factory because only 52 percent of its freshman class were seniors there four years later.

Lackland Superintendent David Splitek said the study is dead wrong in Stacey's case.

"Our kids aren't dropping out. They're moving out of state or overseas. With a loaded term like that, you think you'd want to have your bases covered."

Lawmakers are working with TEA officials to target the dropout problem, DeEtta said. The Legislature has appropriated $148 million over the past four years for the Texas High School Program, which is designed to increase graduation rates and prepare students for college and career success, she said.

Agency officials hope graduation rates will start to increase soon.

Bandera ISD spokesman Brad Domitrovich said the district is working more with at-risk kids, offering peer mentoring, quicker academic intervention and a catch-up program for seniors without the credits to graduate.

"We're really focusing harder now on the freshmen and sophomores so they don't turn into what's called 'freshmores,'" he said, referring to students in their second year of high school without enough credits to take a sophomore curriculum.

"We've had better success at keeping the kids at their level with the new program."

Several Texas schools, many in the border area, where just 52 percent graduate, are trying a more personalized educational experience by creating small learning communities at each high school.

Staff Writers Jenny Caputo and Zeke MacCormack contributed to this report from San Antonio.