Friday, October 21, 2011
City Year Tackles the High School Dropout Crisis
Some people don’t understand how bright and wonderful they are. Sometimes, they just need some encouragement and help to better understand themselves. Alisha is one of those people. As a senior corps member with City Year in Los Angeles, I spend four days a week from 7:30 a.m. to about 6 p.m. working at Markham Middle School in Watts. I joined City Year as a mid-year corps member in January of last year, after graduating a semester early from the University of Michigan. Throughout college, while aware of social injustice and achievement gaps in education, I never really did much about it. City Year provided me with a unique opportunity to finally take action.
Story continued here.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
A “Civic Marshall Plan” among organizations representing administrators, teachers, parents, policy makers and community leaders is underway. Targeting the dropout factory high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools, the plan sets concrete benchmarks for action around on-track reading, chronic absenteeism, early warning systems, school and community supports, and school transformation. The goal is both to graduate more students from high school and ensure they are college and career ready. Our case studies show that those schools that are raising standards and matching them with supports to students and teachers are having the most success.
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In 2010, America’s Promise Alliance launched its most ambitious campaign ever – Grad Nation – to end the high school dropout crisis and prepare young people for college and the 21st century workforce. One in four public school children drop out before they finish high school. That’s 1.3 million students a year – one every 26 seconds, 7,000 every school day. But this is a campaign we can win … must win … and will win.
More information here.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Dropout Rate Increases for California’s Minority Students
The achievement gap is alive and well in the State of California—and it’s still breaking down along racial lines. Data from the Annual Report on Dropout and Graduation released by the California Department of Education shows that in the 2008 to 2009 school year, 37 percent of black students dropped out of high school, and with a 27 percent dropout rate, things aren’t looking much better for the state’s Latino population.
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Chicago’s schools turnaround strategy is working
Tribune reporter Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah recently introduced readers to Kenyatta Stansberry, aka “The Marine.” She’s the tough new principal charged with lifting scores and graduation rates at Marshall Metropolitan High School, perennially one of the city’s worst.Lo and behold, Stansberry is succeeding: Attendance soared 22.7 percentage points in the school year just ended. Most important: 70 percent of freshmen are on track to graduate. That’s up from an abysmal 30 percent last year. Officials expect test scores, due soon, will also be significantly improved.
Story continued here.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Failing U.S. Education Will Dumb Down Economic Growth
The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University calculates that the average high school dropout will have a lifetime negative net fiscal contribution to society of some -$5,200. The average high school graduate generates a positive lifetime number of $287,384. The sharply lower figure for dropouts aged 18 to 64 reflects lower annual federal, state, and local tax payments, higher cash and in-kind transfers, and the costs of incarceration relative to a high school graduate. (The comparable figure for a college graduate with only a bachelor’s degree is $793,079.)
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Infographic: The Cost of Dropping Out
Monday, October 17, 2011
U.S. Graduation Rate Continues Decline
Every school day, more than 7,200 students fall through the cracks of America’s public high schools. Three out of every 10 members of this year’s graduating class, 1.3 million students in all, will fail to graduate with a diploma. The effects of this graduation crisis fall disproportionately on the nation’s most vulnerable youths and communities. A majority of nongraduates are members of historically disadvantaged minorities and other educationally underserved groups. They are more likely to attend school in large, urban districts. And they come disproportionately from communities challenged by severe poverty and economic hardship.
Story continued here.
Left Behind: A Star Editorial Board Series
Left Behind: A Star Editorial Board Series, originally a series of eight editorials co-written by [RiShawn Biddle] was expanded into a six-month series as its revelations captured the attention of politicians, educators and ordinary Hoosiers alike. As it moved from revealing how inflated graduation rates hid a dropout crisis plaguing both Indianapolis, Indiana and American society, to discussing the underlying causes, I came up with new ways of dramatizing the issue, including a photo-and-text package discussing the lives of men and women who dropped out of school. By learning how to crunch the numbers and finding more statistics, I also added new, original data that, for readers, expanded their understanding of the problem.
Read RiShawn’s editorials here.
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What do you think about the nation’s drop-out crisis? From your perspective, what are the problems and potential solutions? Let us know by commenting below and Twitting all week with #dropoutcrisis!
