Educators waved their red flags in September 2008 at high school dropout rates while Fox News, among other news channels, put the spotlight on California. And this past May, the San Diego News Network reported that the San Diego Unified School District, SDUSD, announced its four-year dropout rate statewide was 20.1% during the 2007-08 academic year, down from 21.1% the previous year. But Jack O’Connell, California’s superintendent of public instruction, still deems the statistics to be “unacceptably high.”
The Alliance for Excellent Education expressed in its March 2009 Policy Brief that, “Dropouts from the class of 2008 will cost the nation more than $319 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes.” The brief also addressed concerns over inconsistencies in the national graduation rate, which is said to be about 50%, and explained that African-American and Hispanic students are dropping out more than Caucasian ones.
“Nationwide, nearly one in three U.S. high school students fails to graduate with a diploma. In total, approximately 1.2 million students drop out each year—averaging 7,000 every school day or one every 26 seconds,” according to America’s Promise Alliance, a cross-sector partnership consisting of over 300 corporations, nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations, and advocacy groups founded by General Colin Powell in 1997. Their mission involves “raising awareness, encouraging action, and engaging in advocacy to provide children the key supports [they] call the Five Promises: Caring Adults, Safe Places, a Healthy Start, an Effective Education, and Opportunities to Help Others.”
The Dropout Prevention Campaign started in April 2008 by America’s Promise Alliance consists of 100 summits aimed at developing workable solutions and action plans for improving graduation rates and students’ college readiness. States hosting the summit receive $25,000, whereas cities receive $10,000. State Farm Insurance is the head sponsor. Other reputable sponsors include AT&T, The Boeing Company, Ford Motor Company Fund, ING Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation, The Wal-Mart Foundation, Simon Foundation for Education, Chevron, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Casey Family Programs, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Bank of America, The Annenberg Foundation, and Capital One. Attendees consist of mayors, governors, business leaders, child advocates, school administrators, students, and parents.
According to the School Library Journal: “The top three cities that saw the greatest improvement in graduation rates are Philadelphia, PA (23 percentage points), Tucson, AZ (23 percentage points), and Kansas City, MO (20 percentage points). They’re followed by El Paso, TX (14 percent percentage points), Portland, OR (13 percentage points), and New York City (13 percentage points).” While there is no singularly definitive plan to reverse the dropout rate, educators can offer special programs and monitor progress, set higher standards for students, and retain, as well as add, valuable educators. All serve to benefit our local education systems while keeping the pace competitive on an international level.
The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics released a report in March 2009 that said, “15-year-old students in Canada and Japan scored higher, on average, than their peers in all other G-8 countries on the combined science literacy scale. The United States scored lower, on average, than their peers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Canada on the combined science literacy scale.” As far as international reading literacy is concerned, fourth graders in the U.S. beat out Scotland and France, but not Italy and the Russian Federation. In the end, only 12% of U.S. fourth graders attained the advanced international standard.
We have so much to learn and pass onto our children, yet we depend on our schools to give them a well-rounded education. But while the figures coming out of schools paint a bleak picture, President Obama speaks words of hope when he insists, “Let there be no doubt, the future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens, and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation.”
Now it’s only a question of whether or not we really will learn from the mistakes of the past to better the chances our youth have of learning in the future.
Trish Parkans is passionate about health and loves animals, music, kayaking, traveling, and cooking all types of food, especially with pumpkin...which makes fall one of her favorite times of the year!