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Julia Steiny on Dropouts and schools

Dropout Solution

Edwatch by Julia Steiny: Dropouts must be heard
Roughly one-third of all American public-school students drop out before graduation, and the rate among black and Hispanic students is more like 50 percent.

Full story...at Projo
Roughly one-third of all American public-school students drop out before graduation, and the rate among black and Hispanic students is more like 50 percent.

So researchers went out to interview and survey a large sample of high-school dropouts -- from rural Nebraska to inner-city Los Angeles -- to find out what the dropouts themselves thought had gone wrong. After all, failing to prepare such a large proportion of our youth weakens the quality of the work force, drives up the need for social services later on, but worst of all, financially cripples a lot of lives.

The resulting report, "The Silent Epidemic," (URL at the end) paints what is for me a painful picture of widespread social disengagement. In the lives of this sample of dropouts -- now between 16 and 25 -- there just wasn't much interpersonal glue. No one -- parents, students, teachers, community members -- seemed to be much invested in connecting these teenagers to school. Yes, the dropouts generally regretted their decision. But their recommendations for how to help others avoid making the same mistake had mostly to do with organizing engaging relationships -- better teaching, adult advisers, stronger home-school communication.

What really caught me by surprise was that fully 88 percent of the report's sample of kids had passing grades. Seventy percent felt confident that they could have met the graduation requirements. So even though a high school diploma was well within reach, it just wasn't worth it to these kids to spend more time in a tedious, irrelevant and interpersonally unconnected place.

Almost half reported that they dropped out because the classes were boring and often too easy. The content was irrelevant to their concerns.

While they complained at length about feeling unconnected to the teachers, I was also surprised to see that as many as 41 percent of these ex-students said they could talk to a teacher or someone in the building about personal problems. Rhode Island's SALT survey asks the same question each year, and with the standout exception of the Met School, all Rhode Island students report significantly lower levels of a personal connection. Fully 56 percent of the dropouts said they could talk to a teacher about academic problems. Rhode Island's high school students average 48 percent. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that our schools are even less caring than the low national average.

The dropouts report that it would have made a huge difference to them if someone, pretty much anyone -- parent, teacher, counselor -- had been so involved with them that they would not have risked disappointing or upsetting them. They urged schools to organize so every students has at least one strong adult- student relationship, just as the research has been recommending for 40 years now. (Sigh)

The kids also felt it would have made a difference if the school had made more of an effort to rope in their parents, to contact them quickly at the first sign of trouble, and to be more aggressive about insisting on their involvement. Of course, at the time, the adolescent was begging the parent not to come to school. But schools need to help parents understand that their job is to stay involved even when the kid protests.

Many report feeling they had too much freedom, which is to say little or no resistence to their impulses, however self-destructive. Parents are disengaged; schools are disengaging and the kids are cut loose from social bonds to go off and do as they please, until such time as their families get sick of supporting their mooching butts. It's at that point, when the dropouts must go out and look for work, that they deeply regret leaving high school.

When, oh when are we going to learn that our culture's social disengagement -- sadly replicated inside of most schools -- is the quicksand on which we're trying to build a strong education system.

When America's students compete unfavorably in international tests, rarely does anyone note that our kids are competing with nations that have comparatively intact social systems -- strong extended families, low rates of residential mobility (except among new immigrant populations) and stable communities. The wealthier of these countries have universal healthcare and even daycare to support their kids. (I'm no big socialist, but these two social services must make a huge difference to the health and general anxiety of many families.) Of the competing industrialized nations, the U.S. has -- hand's down -- the highest rates of teen-pregnancy, suicide, homicide, substance abuse, divorce, single- parenting, mobility and on and on.

From the kids' point of view, the social fabric has disintegrated to the point where it just doesn't support them.

But according to the National Center on Education Statistics, the United States spent just under $450 billion on public education last year alone. That $450 billion says to me that the nation's public school system is already organized, staffed and funded such that it could offer every single student an adult advocate during his or her time in K-12 schooling. School staff often complain that it isn't their job to care for the kids. But given what a lack of care does to the schools' dropout statistics, never mind the test scores, you would think they'd just bite the bullet on this one, and see to it that every child is known well by at least one adult. From that personal understanding of their students, teachers might be able to figure out how education could be more engaging.

At the secondary level, each professional could take groups of 12 to 15 students for 15, 20 minutes each day for the duration of that kid's time in school. This is called "adviseries." Elementary teachers, who are usually less distant from their kids in the first place, need much better social service support so they can be more involved with the families. All schools can be much clearer about their expectations for parenting successful students.

No fancy curriculum, spiffy new building, off-the-shelf program, anti-bullying initiative or improvement committee is going to change drop-out rates substantially. Already parents, teachers and guidance counselors drone on and on about the liabilities of dropping out of school, and still kids leave in droves. Everyone's got to start thinking about education from the point of view of the kids. I certainly don't mean we should avoid Algebra I or those classics the kids whine about. We need to think again about how to teach them, given who the kids actually are, and not who we wish they were.

"The Silent Epidemic" is available at http://www.civicenterprises.net/pdfs/thesilentepidemic3-06.pdf .

Links

The Silent Epidemic