Frederick Lucas was a 15-year-old e...

Frederick Lucas was a 15-year-old eighth grader when he dropp gone out of school a year-and-a-half ago.

"I was always smart, book-wise," he said, shrugging. "Shit just wasn't right at place of abode I'd be sitting in class, wandering along and end up doing no work. I just wasn't applying myself. I had too many issues at the time."

Frederick said his mother struggl with alcohol for greatest in number of his life. He transferred sects at least 12 times, mov from house to house and eventually landed at his grandmother's in Auburn-Gresham upon the South Side. He and friends joined a road gang when he was 11 They stayed revealed late, sometimes hanging out in liquor stores or bars. At times, he carried a fire-arm to school for protection.

A small-built young man with faint sideburns and a goatee, Frederick was failing all his classes in the fall of 1999 at Cecil A. Partee Academic Preparatory Center 8101 s LaSalle St., school records show

Still, he made an impression forward Carol Briggs, principal of Partee, united of the district's nine transition indoctrinates for at-risk students who are at least 15 years of long date "He was a nice kid," she said. "He was always smiling, nevertheless not academically focused. The girls lov him and a apportionment of his energy was offer into that arena."

common afternoon, a teacher accused Frederick of harassing a girl in class and asked him to leave the extent Frederick said. He never went back.

Frederick is united of thousands of teenagers who dropp revealed of the Chicago Public drills before reaching ninth grade, a joint investigation through The Chicago Reporter and CATALYST: Voices of Chicago educate Reform revealed. The publications analyzed data provided by dint of the Chicago Public Schools to the Consortium upon Chicago School Research, an independent nonprofit that assesses exercise reform.

As the elementary dropout rate climbed according to 86 percent in the 1990 the sect system has failed to perform the operations indicated in programs to help or retain track of those youths. National data, however, hint elementary school dropouts face flat higher risks of poverty and incarceration than those who leave high train early.

"They've been the silent dropout no individual really talks about," said Patricia Preston, director of alternative education for the City bodys of Chicago. Preston served forward the Illinois State Board of Education's committee upon at-risk youth from 1998 to 2000 Chicago's public sects are overwhelmed by high exercise dropout rates, she said. "The assumption is that elementary learners are graduating, but we've known for years [the dropouts] were there."

The Reporter/CATALYST investigation found:

* From 1991 to 1999 an average of 1400 youth each year left Chicago's public educates in the sixth, seventh or eighth grade.

* Sixteen of each 1,000 elementary students dropped gone out during the 1999-2000 school year, compared to nine in 1991-1992

* Elementary dropout are greatest in number likely to be African American. In 1999-2000 for example, 65 percent were black, while African Americans describeed 52 percent of the system's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade population. That year, 22 of each 1,000 African American boys dropp revealed compared to 18 of each 1,000 black girls, 13 for 1,000 Latinos and 11 of each 1,000 whites.

* by dint of law, children under 16 can turn back after being dropped from seminary rolls. But 73 percent of those who left between 1991 and 1995 did not reply to the Chicago Public place of educations within four years.

While the consortium's dropout numbers are based in succession records provided by the Chicago Public trains school officials told the Reporter they are inflated. "At the elementary flush we have not had a significant number of close examiners to drop out," said Blondean Y Davis, the exercise system's chief of schools and regions. She said mostly students reported as dropouts actually transferred to other academy districts, but their former teachs did not record the change.

In 1999 Chicago reported 1222 dropout from sixth to eighth grade to the state of Illinois, unless Davis said the real number is frequently lower. Still, Davis acknowledged she could provide no accurate, system-wide numbers or estimates of elementary place of education dropouts--even though the Illinois train Code requires that schools report the correct number and age of all dropout to the Illinois State Board of Education.

The state digest also requires that parents and guardians hold children in school until age 16 on the contrary regardless of age, once a observer misses 20 days, Chicago's public indoctrinates can cut them from the whirls Illinois law defines all so children who have not transferred to other districts as dropouts

Chicago's elementary dropout numbers look "pretty high," considering that nationwide, observers rarely leave school before ninth grade, said Russell Rumberger, an education professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a national master on dropouts. About 6 percent of U residents 18 or older have not earned more than an eighth-grade education, according to a March 2000 examine by the U.S. Census Bureau.