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Dropouts check out in elementary school

January 29, 2012 By 7 Comments

Requiring school attendance through age 18, as proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union speech, won’t make a difference, argues teacher Marilyn Rhames in Ed Week. Students drop out mentally long before high school — as early as third grade, she writes. By high school, it’s exceptionally difficult to save the 16-year-old illiterate or the 16-year-old expecting her second baby or the 16-year-old who “doesn’t feel safe at school because of bullying or gang activity.”

Reform efforts to lower the high school dropout rate must be focused on supporting the under-performing students in elementary and middle schools. This is where we can get the best bang for our buck. Of course, high schools would also need systems in place to continue to motivate students to stay in school. I believe that it is never too late to try to help a student, but by the time students prone to dropping out reach high school, they may be in need of an organ transplant—a radical, life-changing intervention. Just forcing him to spend a couple more miserable years in school until he reaches 18 is just prolonging the inevitable, especially if the learning credits are not there.

Some 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year, Rhames writes.

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Oklahoma may cancel graduation requirements

January 5, 2012 By

Oklahoma may repeal its brand-new graduation requirements for fear of high failure rates, reports the Tulsa World.

The class of 2012 is the first group of students to face the state graduation requirements created by lawmakers in 2005 as part of Achieving Classroom Excellence legislation.

Each student is required to pass four of seven end-of-instruction exams to get a high school diploma. The exams are in Algebra I and II, English II and III, Biology I, geometry and U.S. history.

Rep. Jerry McPeak, D-Warner, predicts 80 percent of legislators will support repealing the higher standards.

Even Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, a co-author of the original bill, wants to rethink the legislation. Schools haven’t been able to give students enough remedial help, she said.

Several states are backing off on higher graduation requirements, notes the Hechinger Report. Georgia eased its requirements last year, cutting the number of exams from four to one.

Other states are raising standards to ensure a passing score signifies college readiness.

New York has vowed to make its high-school graduation exams tougher after a study last year showed that even students who pass the math test may be placed in remedial math classes in college. Florida recently raised its cut-off scores on all standardized exams, including those in high school, and is developing additional end-of-course assessments.

Statistics showing that large numbers of high-school graduates are unprepared for college coursework have fueled the push to make tests more difficult. Right now, many of those who do earn a diploma must enroll in at least one remedial course in college.

Nearly a quarter of high school graduates who seek to enter the military fail the entrance exam, which tests subjects such as word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, arithmetic reasoning and general science, Hechinger reports.

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EEOC: Requiring diploma may violate disabilities act

January 3, 2012 By

Requiring job applicants to have a high school diploma may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the Washington Times:

The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.”

Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “‘screens out’ an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of ‘disability,’” the EEOC explained.

While the letter doesn’t carry the force of law, employers can’t afford to ignore it, labor lawyers say. I doubt “help wanted” ads will say: “High school diploma required, unless you have a learning disability.” Perhaps they’ll be allowed to say “high school diploma preferred.”

Employers don’t like to hire dropouts — even those who’ve earned a GED — because they fear they’re unable to work within a system.

Some fear more high school students will drop out if they see employers no longer require a diploma for entry-level jobs.

Filed Under: Careers, Disability, Education Tagged With: , , , ,

Growing up is hard to do

December 21, 2011 By

Growing up is hard to do: Young people are extending their school years and delaying work and marriage, according to America’s Youth Transitions to Adulthood (pdf), an analysis of Americans 14 to 24 from the 1980s to 2010 by the National Center for Education Statistics.

In 1980, 16 percent of young adults ages 22 to 24 were enrolled in college compared to 30 percent in 2010, NCES found.

Fewer teen-agers hold jobs, notes Inside School Research.

From 1980 to 1999, 30 percent or more of 16- and 17-year-olds were employed at least part-time, but that percentage has been plummeting since 2000, and by 2009, only about 15 percent of teenagers in that age group had a job.

Only 49 percent of high school dropouts held a job in the year they left school, compared to 64 percent in 1980.

Educational expectations are higher:  “Among the poorest 25 percent of young people, only 11 percent of high school seniors in 2004 said they did not expect to complete high school, compared with more than a third of the poorest students in 1972.”

 

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Squeezed out

November 23, 2011 By

Nationwide, 37 percent of community college students say they’ve failed to get into a class because it was full this fall; 20 percent can’t get the classes they need to complete a degree or certificate.

A community college dropout in New York City costs $17,700 in wasted financial aid and support for the the college system, according to a new report. Only 28 percent of students complete a degree — associate or bachelor’s — in six years.

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Poll: College is essential, expensive

November 11, 2011 By

Young adults think a college education is more important than ever — and less affordable — according to a new poll. They want more financial aid.

Also on Community College Spotlight: With the help of dropout recovery programs, community colleges are opening the door to high school dropouts.

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Dropouts are job creators

October 26, 2011 By

The U.S. education system trains students to follow the rules and collect degrees, writes Michael Ellsberg in a New York Times op-ed. Dropouts are the job creators who can save America, he argues.

I typed these words on a computer designed by Apple, co-founded by the college dropout Steve Jobs. The program I used to write it was created by Microsoft, started by the college dropouts Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

And as soon as it is published, I will share it with my friends via Twitter, co-founded by the college dropouts Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and Facebook — invented, among others, by the college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, and nurtured by the degreeless Sean Parker.

American academia is good at producing writers, literary critics and historians. It is also good at producing professionals with degrees. But we don’t have a shortage of lawyers and professors. America has a shortage of job creators. And the people who create jobs aren’t traditional professionals, but start-up entrepreneurs.

From kindergarten through undergraduate and grad school, students learn few entrepreneurial skills or attitudes, Ellsberg writes. Students don’t learn about sales, unless they take a class on why sales and capitalism are evil. They don’t learn to network with others. Creativity is stifled. Worst of all, they don’t learn how failure can lead to success.

Our education system encourages students to play it safe and retreat at the first sign of failure (assuming that any failure will look bad on their college applications and résumés).

While some jobs require a college degree, many people find jobs in the informal market, where who you know and what you’ve done matter more than paper credentials, he writes.

Parents could refuse to pay for useless degrees, but most are ”caught up in outmoded mentalities about education forged in the stable economy of the 1950s (but profoundly misguided in today’s chaotic, entrepreneurial economy).”

Employers could overturn the system “if they explicitly offered routes to employment for those who didn’t get a degree because they were out building businesses.”

OK, for the exceptionally talented and self-educated few.  But most college dropouts aren’t Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.  And some people do learn useful things in college.

 

Filed Under: Careers, College Tagged With: , , , , ,

Paying for dropouts

October 20, 2011 By

Community college dropouts cost federal, state and local taxpayers nearly $4 billion over a five-year period, concludes a new study. The study looked at first-year, full-time, credential-seeking students, who are much more likely to graduate. Add in part-timers and it gets much worse.

Also on Community College Spotlight: Postsecondary education is the path out of poverty, but many stumble along the way.

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Job training for the ‘other half’

September 16, 2011 By

The “other half” of Americans — poor, jobless and isolated — desperately need access to job training at community colleges, a professor writes.

Also on Community College Spotlight: To prevent college dropouts, start more students in occupational certificate programs instead of general education.

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High dropout rate has high costs

September 14, 2011 By

Low educational attainment has a high cost, writes RiShawn Biddle on Dropout Nation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest report, the median annual income for a high school dropout is $10,996. That’s 60 percent less than workers with some college education and 74 percent less than bachelor’s degree grads.

Young men lag in nearly every educational indicator except math, he adds.

In the Dropout Nation podcast, Biddle argues that President Obama’s $450 billion stimulus plan, which includes $60 billion for “allegedly avoiding teacher layoffs and fixing up school buildings,” will do little for poorly educated jobless Americans.

Filed Under: Careers, Education Tagged With: , , , ,
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