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 High Schools & Drop Out Rates…Sound the Alarms! 
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School Dropout -

Schools and communities across the country are facing a dropout emergency. This is about 30 percent of the nations high school students who dropout before graduation (nearly one in three high school students enrolled in ninth grade this year will not graduate with their class). It is known that privileged schools have generally higher graduation rates than non-privileged schools.

Now the Questions:(think about the questions and write you response).

Who is to blame? (parents, clergy, educators, principals, school board, business leaders, lawmakers, students…)

What kind of plan should be created to reduce the dropout rates among high school students?

How do you feel about the No Child Left Behind Act?

* Keep in mind: The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law January 2002, aims to make sure that all children achieve academic proficiency within 12 years and gain the educational skills necessary to succeed later in life. It also attempts to ensure that children are monitored at an early age to ensure that all children succeed and aims to reduce the achievement gap between subgroups.

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Melissa Venant


Sat Nov 04, 2006 11:35 am
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I feel like the biggest blame for students dropping out is the pressure and stress our schooling systems put on students. Basically, the TESTS! Teachers cannot teach just to be teaching but have to go by a guideline based off a certain test. School systems have put so much emphasis on test that this matters more than what a child has done all year long. So if you have a student that is struggling with test taking will probably eventually get sick of school and quit if this matters more than a student’s overall success in school. Example: A student has an 87 in a certain class but after taking the EOG and scoring a 65, which counts 30 percent of their overall grade, gives the student an 80. I feel like dropout rates will continue to get worse as long as test matters more in a students education. I feel like the best way for this to change is parents, teachers, students, etc. is going to have to stand up to our school system and demand a change. Meaning, an emphasis on testing needs to change. Our schooling systems need to go back to the basics, and not teach in regards to the test.

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Christin Peterson


Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:11 am
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School drop out rates are a problem. I believe that the bulk of the problem lies in student attitudes towards school. Manny of the school dropouts I know did so because they did not understand the value of the education they were provided. For them, education was something that society had forced on them instead of provided for them. I believe that we as teachers need to stress that education is an opportunity and why it’s valuable to students on every level.

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"I Never Let My School'n get in the way of my Education"


Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:02 am
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As a reply to Christens post about testing: many people don’t know that testing was originally designed to test the TEACHER, not the student. What the system has become is a way to evaluate the students and measure American schools with each other and the world.

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"I Never Let My School'n get in the way of my Education"


Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:08 am
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Quote:
The No Child Left Behind act was put into place to improve the academic performance of disadvantaged students, boost teacher quality, and to move limited English proficient students to English fluency, among many other things, however, we are still faltering in the classrooms all across America. The quality of our public schools directly affects us all as, yet too many children in America are segregated by low expectations, illiteracy, and self-doubt. In a constantly changing world that is demanding increasingly complex skills from its workforce, children are literally being left behind. It does not have to be this way, which makes these circumstances very frustrating and uncomfortable. It is up to us. It is our responsibility to help these children so that they may have a bright and prosperous future.


Do kids drop out because they feel inferior or are there other underlying reasons? I'v heard students so loosly throw around the idea of dropping out and its frightening. Yes, at a certain age they do have the right to drop out, but we as future teachers need to encourage our students to not only NOT drop out, but to think of other ideas and options of obtaing success.

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*Jennifer Clark*


Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:34 pm
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There's a lot of criticism about NCLB and, as you guys know, I am critical about everything but I feel like there is a pro-con story here.

When I skimmed through the actual NCLB Law (an amendment) that Congress wrote, it looked like our representatives were trying to appropriate federal funding to schools and school programs that need those funds. Obviously the funds allocated to education pale in comparison to the military's budget -- $56 compared to $419 billion -- but the President's office proposes how the Dept. of Education should spend tax payer's money. NCLB was designed, from what I can see, as another method to access the effectiveness of school programs and channel funds only to programs that work. So what works? I suppose one could say that every school program is effective because we are the teachers inside those programs, but how do taxpayers know that? This must be what some citizens call "accountability".

What I find interesting about NCLB is how Congress delegated the methods of accountability to the states, so it is actually up to North Carolina's Dept. of Public Instruction to access our state's school programs. The wording of the law even includes teacher input about those assessments:

Quote:
For any State desiring to receive a grant under this part, the State educational agency shall submit to the Secretary a plan, developed by the State educational agency, in consultation with local educational agencies, teachers, principals, pupil services personnel, administrators (including administrators of programs described in other parts of this title), other staff, and parents
(Section 1111, 20 USC 6301)

Of course a few pages later is the popularly criticized section about how all students are expected to meet the same standards, however, the NCLB law itself, from what I have read, does not demand that 'States must use multiple-choice EOGs'. The method of assessing student achievement is left up to our state's department of education, our superintendents and principals, we the teachers, etc. to decide. Of course, who knows which teachers were consulted? ...

Once North Carolina decides how we access students, however, those assessments must be statewide and binding -- becoming the "standard". Melissa mentioned these standards above. From what I've read, a state's standards flow into NCLB's often criticized AYPs (Academic Yearly Progress) requirements, and AYP's channel Title I funds to or from teacher re-development, after school programs, etc. Eitherway I think the most important point is this: no state is required to adhere to NCLB; states applying for federal funds must adhere to the new law. Most states' tax systems, however, cannot sustain a public school system without federal assistance. And last time I heard, the second largest burden on North Carolina's taxpayers is public education. (The most burdensome is Medicare and Medicaid).

In one sense, American children and our students should not be reduced to $ signs, yet in another sense education is a public institution that depends on federal and state monies. Alternatives to NCLB include increasing taxes or privatizing schools ... let's not go there. ;)

Still, aren't there pros and cons?

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Justin Pittman


Tue Nov 07, 2006 8:42 pm
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I recently did research on an article about this topic that I found very interesting. It talked mainly about how much of a correlation there was between high school dropout rates and grade retention in elementary schools. It was based on a study in Chicago where the percentage of dropouts who were held back a grade early was much higher than the students who made it through every grade. That was crazy to me, because what if I have to hold a student back one day and due to that they end up dropping out? The article also talked about high-stakes testing and how much of an influence that has on the students performance. I would hate to think that I held a student back because their test scores dropped their grade that much. However, this does happen all the time, and I believe as teachers we need to recognize that and start talking to our students about it at an earlier age.

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Jessica Beckworth


Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:49 am
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Here is a list of realistic "Drop Out Rates" FACTS:

· The highest rate of graduation among African-American students was 71% in West Virginia, followed by Massachusetts, Arkansas, and New Jersey. The highest rate of graduation among Latino students was 82% in Montana, followed by Louisiana, Maryland, and Hawaii.

· Georgia had the lowest overall graduation rate in the nation with 54% of students graduating, followed by Nevada, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

· Iowa had the highest overall graduation rate with 93%, followed by North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.

Differences by Race and Ethnicity:
Black and Hispanic youth are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to drop out of high school. In 2004, 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites ages 16 to 24 were not enrolled in school and had not completed high school, compared with 12 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Hispanics. The high rate for Hispanics is in part the result of the high proportion of immigrants in this age group who never attended school in the U.S. Asian youth, with a dropout rate of 4 percent, had the lowest dropout rate among all racial and ethnic groups in 2004.

Differences by Gender:
In 2004, 12 percent of males ages 16 to 24 were high school dropouts, compared with 9 percent of females. Although males comprise one-half of the population, they make up 57 percent of the dropouts in this age group.

Differences by Immigration Status:
The dropout rates for high-school students ages 16 to 24 vary by immigration status. Foreign-born students had a dropout rate of 26 percent in 2004, compared with 17 percent for children born in the U.S. to foreign-born parents, both of which are higher than the national average. While foreign-born students make up 11 percent of the total population of students in this age group, they make up 28 percent of the dropout population.

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Melissa Venant


Wed Nov 08, 2006 8:09 pm
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I remember when I came into my high school freshman year there was 700 students in my class. I did not really think about that number again until my senior year when graduation came around. According to the graduation bulletin there were to be 560 students graduating. I was very confused by this because I remembered our class had 700 incoming students 4 years before. I had known of a couple of kids who dropped out but this number was alarming to me. I had no idea that that many kids had dropped out since freshmen year. High School dropout is a very serious problem facing our education system. I dont know of any programs that address this problem and I think it is unknown to most people how bad this problem is.

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Ryan Brown


Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:05 pm
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