Dropout rate is up: Disrupted teens gave up on school

The high school dropout rate is up, reports Julian Shen-Berro on Chalkbeat.

Students who fell behind when classes went virtual feel school is "just too hard," said Megan Facer, a clinical assistant director at Youth Villages. They don't believe they'll ever catch up.

“When we reopened, they had to decide, ‘Do I go back to school, where I wasn’t doing that great, and I don’t know what the relevance of it is anyway? Or do I stay in this $20- to $25-an-hour job?” said Steve Dobo, founder of Zero Dropouts, an educational social enterprise that works with school districts in Colorado. “A lot of them are choosing to stay in those jobs.”

I don't think it's a disaster if unmotivated, unprepared students choose work over college, but the prospects for high school dropouts are very grim.