Speak Out!
Dealing with Dropouts
Sun, 09/13/2009 - 20:09 | Education
School districts around the country are trying to address the low high school graduation rates in the U.S., especially in urban districts. The Detroit district got a helping hand from educator-comedian Bill Cosby.
In recent years, the district has mismanaged its way to a $259 million deficit. Its graduation rate is among the lowest in the nation, the dropout rate among the highest.
In Los Angeles, the board adopted a controversial resolution that could turn a third of its schools over to private operators.
CNN.com has an article on a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois:
Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called "a persistent high school dropout crisis."
And, according to the Web site of the House Committee on Education & Labor:
The U.S. high school dropout crisis poses one of the greatest threats to the nation’s economic growth and competitiveness and must be addressed, witnesses told the House Education and Labor Committee today. Witnesses urged Congress to explore legislative solutions as quickly as possible.
In the global economy, post-high school study is often required even for blue-collar jobs.
What has to happen to help young people at risk value education and stay in school?
How to Make Black America Better
Comments
Helping at Risk Youth Value Education
I am a middle school teacher in one of the largest school districts in the St. Louis, metropolitan area, and since the implementation of No Child Left Behind. NCLB was supposed to be a policy that ensured that all students receive a high quality education, yet since its implementation, more and more students are being left behind each year, and there is a continued lack of academic achievement among our students who are at risk.
There are several reasons for this, and I could write an entire book about them. I believe that everyone has a right to a quality education; for in our society it is probably the most important ingredient for achieving the “American Dream.” Unfortunately many of our children are not receiving that quality education. A lot of this has to do with the conditions of their communities and the schools that they attend, as well as being prone to drug abuse, gang violence and in many cases institutional racism.
According to Tatum (2005), many minority students, particularly those of African American and Hispanic descent live in neighborhoods where going to school is not the cool thing to do, and when they get there they often don’t feel welcomed by their teachers. He goes on to state that the reasoning behind this is that teachers often do not understand where these particular students are coming from and the types of things they have been through, they tend to treat them like they are unable to learn setting low expectations for them. As a teacher, I can surely attest to this.
The student population in the district that I work and live in is predominantly African American, yet the majority of the teachers are white. Our district is made up of three large high schools, six middle schools, 20 elementary schools and three early childhood centers. There are three sides in the district, east, central and west. The east side of the district has a largest population of students who receive free and reduced lunch, and while there are students in the other two areas who do receive free and reduced lunch, the number is much smaller compared to those on the east side. The test scores on the east side of the district are consistently lower than the other two sides of the district. This is because expectations are generally lower for these students because of the perceived conditions of the communities in which they live in. Most at risk kids come into our schools year after year not trusting the system because they so often do not receive the nurturing and support that is needed to help make them believe that they can do well in school. Most of them are going through system year after year not learning anything because the curriculum that is being presented to them is not authentic or meaningful. They simply can't relate to what is being taught, and rather then get to the bottom of why these kids are not achieving, they are being pushed in special education classrooms where they are past on year after year without learning a thing. Then by the time they get to high school, they are so discouraged by this system, that they dropout.
If our students are going to be sucessful in school, there must be high expectations set for them. Learning must be an enjoyable experience for children. In the world that we live in today, we literally have to compete for their attention. Children are exposed to so many different things (sex, drugs, violence) that it is often difficult for us to get them interested in learning anything in school.
For this reason we have to do everything in our power to gain their interest as early as possible because it gets a lot harder as they get older. Once we have their attention we have to be flexible and realize that all children are different and they all have different ways of learning. If we are going to be able to teach them, we have to reach them at their levels. It is essential that we respect our students and earn their trust. This has to happen before any learning takes place.
We have to realize that they are people just like we are who sometimes have problems outside of school that can and will interfere with their learning. A student whose parents are going through a divorce is probably not going to be very interested in the effects of the Civil War or the Diary of Anne Frank. A student who has to be the caregiver to younger siblings because his/her single parent works nights or is strung out on drugs is probably not going to be interested in solving word problems or learning the scientific method.
As educators, we have to first understand where our kids are coming from and then we have to know how to help them cope with their issues before we can teach them how to read and write. If we really want to solve the problem of the high school dropout rate, then we have to deal with the real issues, and this is going to take more than the schools. It is going to take the "village" to step up and play a role.
First the importance of education needs to be stressed in our homes, but it also needs to be reinforced by the community. It is essential that parents are actively involved in the schools, know what is going on in the school districts and vote for members of the school board. It always surprises me that parents have no clue as to who sits on the school board in their communities. These are the people who make the decisions that will have major effects on our children’s educations, yet most of us won’t go out to vote in a school board election, and never attend any school board meetings. Schools are a part of communities; therefore the community should be involved in the schools. After all, the students who attend the schools live in the community. If our schools are failing then ultimately our neighborhoods are going to fail as well.
There is always room in schools for mentoring programs, and individuals in the community to come and sponsor afterschool activities. This would help to keep students off the streets during after school hours as well as to provide them with positive role models and activities to help with their overall learning and development. I believe that it would cause fewer kids to become a part of gangs, and get into trouble outside of school.
These are just some of the many issues that need to be addressed in order to deal with the ever increasing high school dropout rate. I am in the process of writing a book on the effects of No Child Left Behind, in which I discuss these issues and a lot more. There needs to be real education reform in our country, and it is my hope that President Obama's administration really get the ball rolling, but it is up to us in our own individual communities to step up to the plate as well.
Re: Helping at risk Youth Value Education
I am an African American Philadelphia Police Officer, of eleven years, currently for the past five years, assigned to a Philadelphia Public High School. What I know for sure by talking with, and building a good and solid communication with my students, is that there is a lack of communication at home, where it all begins. And a lack of responsibility on the part of the parent.
In the African American communities, as we all know, there is always the possibility of the "absent" parent. Better known as dad. And where there is no father, the sole responsibility rests on the mom, or in later times, grandmom. It's sad, and true that the absent father is still a present concern for most of the young people that I talk to.
I understand my responsibility as an officer, however, I tend to go the extra mile to help instill in our young people values. Something that most of them aren't getting from home. Whether it's because of the absent parent, or maybe it's because mom is too involved with working two, maybe three jobs to hold it all together. And, after talking to a lot of them, I find that many of our young people are also too busy helping out at home raising their other sibblings because mom or/and dad have given up on them, that there is no time for an education. What I see is a sad, confused, and a lost society that cares more about building football stadiums, than they do about educating our children. And sadly for the African American young folk, who probably already have to struggle in life based on their home environment, they themselves also walk away from education because they are too busy focusing on trying to fit in with a society who couldn't care less about them. Some of them, are so focused on the Jay z's, and the Puff Daddy's and what they have, that they have some how found a way to acquire some of what they feel would make them fit in to their status, that it doesn't seem to matter how they attain it. Even if they have to rob your mother to get it.
I hear all of this from our young people and it saddens my heart. And what makes me even sadder is to show up on a priority assignment, (like a shooting) and see that it's one of my students from the school I'm assigned to. Or hear that over the summer break, one of them have been murdered.
Yes education is key, and we talk about this as well. However, being a Christian, I believe that when God was taken from the school, we failed our children. And, until we allow His name to be used again, we will continue scratching our heads, trying to figure out what we can do next. We tend to by pass God, and come up with the next solution for fixing the problem, the next argument as to why things are the way they are with our children, and we tend to forget that it is "In God we trust."
Yes there are many reasons why our young people are failing in school. It all begins at home. And until we as parents really step in and guide our children, and stop looking to the system to fix them, or waiting for some scholar to come up with a reasonable solution, we will continue to lose children to the streets, and raise high school drop outs. We need to instill values in our children, and love them with a love, that the world cannot give them. It's really not that hard to figure out, that in the end, "Love Wins."
You are preaching to the
You are preaching to the choir on this one. You are so right about us failing our children when we allowed God to be taken out of the schools, and I truly believe that is why God calls teachers such as myself into the classrooms. While I may not be able to teach the "word," I can demonstrate the love of christ in my daily actions, and there are times when I have to use scripture to reach some of my students. You are so right, in the end love truly does win!!!
Meaning no disrespect to
Meaning no disrespect to either the teacher or the officer but the question is 'What is needed......?' The bad points have been discussed and recognized to death but the need is not fully addressed. Here is what we need: to gather every adult, rather they are a parent or not, and begin a community chest. Everyone makes a promise and contract to give 10 dollars a week toward this chest. We get 7.5million Americans of African descent to join. At $10 a week we can put away 3.9 billion dollars a year. We get the children involved from the ages of 3-18 years of age and they contribute .03 cent a day which will equal .21 cent a week. With 3 million children giving .03 a day that would be the equal of $900,000 a day 6.3 million dollars a week in a year that will equal 327,600,000 dollars a year. With what the adults put in we can improve the welfare and education of both children and adults by utilizing the money for the health and wealth of the community.
Since we know that there are those in both the community and the schools that don't think education is 'cool' we use these monies to inspire them. We get them to see that it(education) is cool and more profitable then what they receive or ever can achieve on the streets without it.
Here is something I learned:throughout school I did pretty well in what was being taught until I hit the higher maths. No matter how many times i asked the teacher to explain I just didn't understand. Now at age 46 I love math it seems so much easier than before.Why? I discovered that it was the way it was being taught. The teacher had a set way to teach it and those students who got it taught it the same way as the teacher. What we are going to do is look at it the way we learned it, by this I mean the method we used to help it sink in.
Think about it. When you learned the things you did, was it by the teacher's method or did you have to tweak what you heard so you could get it? That's what our children need. they need to be told 'tweak it to what you can understand.'
Here's another thing I discovered:Children need to be constantly reminded of what they are supposed to know. In math the board of ed. says that we have to be done with this much or this section by this or that date. We are going to make it to where every time that child comes into the room we go back over not only yesterday's chapter but all chapters that we've been through. This keeps the rules and methods of doing problems as they advance fresh in their minds.
The last thing I discovered is that we as adults have forgotten what it is to be a child. We waited so long to become adults that now we can only think of our childhoods in the negative or in general terms. It stops our connecting with the children which in essence keeps us from seeing what is needed for their continual growth in education, community and life.
It is my hope that Mr. Smiley and others may see this so that they may throw their considerable weight and resources behind such a plan and see how it works.
PS I do believe the Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, but when man religious ideas get into the mix it becomes more about him than about Christ. In James it is written;'Pure religion and undefiled in truth before God and the Father is this to assist the fatherless and the widows in their afflictions and to keep yourself unspotted from the world'
This Foundation of God with us is not about religion but about that which Jesus said 'And the second is like unto it 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself'