Armstrong School District is challenging the findings of a widely publicized Johns Hopkins University report that district officials believe misidentifies three district high schools as being “dropout factories.”

Johns Hopkins University researchers released the report this week using U.S. Department of Education data for the class of 2004, ‘05, and ’06. Their report identifies 1,700 high schools nationwide as being “dropout factories” if a senior class was made up of 60 percent or fewer of the students who entered as freshmen. The researchers compared enrollments at one point in time to enrollments at another point in time.

Armstrong School District administrators immediately took issue with the report because Elderton, Kittanning and West Shamokin high schools were included, despite the fact that the district-wide graduation rate is about 90 percent any given year.

“We believe Johns Hopkins University did not account for the roughly 30 percent of Armstrong School District 11th and 12th-grade students who transfer out of our high schools to attend Lenape Technical School and graduate from there,” said Substitute Superintendent Chris DeVivo. “We believe that in the Johns Hopkins University report, these large numbers of students who transfer to Lenape Tech are mistakenly being counted as dropouts from Armstrong School District.”

The district stated its case to Johns Hopkins University, and Wednesday, Johns Hopkins University researcher Bob Balfanz told the school district that this line of reasoning, on face value, has merit.

“On face value this has merit, we just need to be able to state it with confidence,” Balfanz wrote to the school district in an email. The university researchers did not immediately say when their review of Armstrong School District’s request for removal from the list would be complete. Another Johns Hopkins University researcher involved with the report told the Trib Total Media Service on Tuesday that perhaps it’s not fair to label Armstrong School District’s high schools as dropout factories because of the large number of students transferring to Lenape Technical School.

The researchers’ published methodology on their Web site states: “We are aware that our analysis will mis-identify a very small percentage of schools….For example, a school in which grades 9-10 serve as a preparatory program or feeder school to a specialized 11-12 program at another school, but still has a sub-set of students who remain all four years at the school.”

That is essentially Armstrong School District’s situation. Currently, Armstrong School District serves 5,867 students. Some 361 11th and 12th grade students who were once tenth-graders in the Armstrong School District have transferred out of the district and enrolled in Lenape Technical School.

Lenape Technical School is a full-day, comprehensive vo-tech school near Ford City. Students can choose to go there and become Lenape Tech students, eventually graduating from there and earning a Lenape Tech diploma. Lenape Tech students are not reported as members by the Armstrong School District. They are reported by Lenape Technical School, which is a separate educational entity.

“The ‘dropout factory’ label is unwarranted in our case,” DeVivo said. “This report is misleading to the Armstrong School District community. It’s an unfair depiction of what happens in the Armstrong School District. We believe all of our schools employ committed and dedicated professional educators and administrators, and we have very high-achieving students who perform well in all aspects of their education.”