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Only about two-thirds of all kids in High Schools in America will graduate.
First, does it matter? Do kids really increase their life skills significantly in the last two years of high school? Is a kid better equipped for a starting level unskilled job, or for parenthood, with that additional year of D's in history and English Lit?
Second, what can be done to keep more kids in school long enough to graduate?
Only about two-thirds of all kids in High Schools in America will graduate.
First, does it matter? Do kids really increase their life skills significantly in the last two years of high school? Is a kid better equipped for a starting level unskilled job, or for parenthood, with that additional year of D's in history and English Lit?
Second, what can be done to keep more kids in school long enough to graduate?
What can be done to keep more kids in school long enough to graduate? That's an interesting way to put it. I just have to stay in school for some length of time? I don't have to learn or understand anything? Will I have to take any tests in order to graduate?
One third of Americans will not graduate. That's about 33%. It just so happens that approximately 25% of Americans have IQ's of less than 90. It could well be that 33% have IQ's less than 95. I've always felt that one would need an IQ of around 100 in order to fully understand a high school curriculum. Fully comprehending the material would get you a pretty good grade. With an IQ of 90 one could probably graduate with poor grades.
With an IQ below 90, I don't think there is the mental capacity to graduate from high school. We should have a different track for folks who are not college bound. If this track was less academically demanding and taught more life skills such as parenting, more folks might would stick around and be able to graduate.
We should have a different track for folks who are not college bound. If this track was less academically demanding and taught more life skills such as parenting, more folks might would stick around and be able to graduate.
- Reel
We need to make programs relevant to different types of people. Many schools already place students in tracts; the problem is that the "gen ed" tract is merely designed to push a kid through the system instead of giving the kid some actual knowledge or experience.
What I would like to see is some trade school programs or apprenticeship opportunities start around the 10th grade year. By that point in a student's development, it becomes quite clear whether the kid is college material. Why not, after two years of generalized education, allow these kids to work toward an electrician's license or something practical?
This idea would have positive implications for everyone. The amount of diploma-mill colleges would decrease because we wouldn't be forcing people into them with the threat of working at McD's for the rest of their lives. Employers would have a ready supply of qualified and trained workers. The economy as a whole would experience tremendous growth because many of the now chronically unemployed/under employed would have stable and viable careers. The number of small businesses would expand because some of the more enterprising members of the skilled trades would venture out on their own. The academically orientated would better be able to take advantage of all that a university can offer.
Somehow we have developed this idea that unless you get a college degree, you are destined to be poor and dumb. This mentality causes many kids that don't see themselves in college or wanting to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, to become disengaged and develop anti-social behaviors.
Our schools need to understand that there is nothing wrong with being a skilled tradesman. Schools should do more to provide meaningful programs in these areas. In short, schools (and the government) needs to get off their high horse and start providing relevant options for kids.
Our schools need to understand that there is nothing wrong with being a skilled tradesman. Schools should do more to provide meaningful programs in these areas. In short, schools (and the government) needs to get off their high horse and start providing relevant options for kids.
However, there is also nothing wrong with having a basic grasp of civics, sociology, history, or geography. Nothing wrong with having concepts of simple scheice and math and some lab experience. Nothing wrong with a few more years of required reading and composition skills and looking words up in a dictionary.
Kids learn to add and subtract and read and write by the third grade. The rest of it is what we used to call education, which is now widely held to be pretty useless in a world where nothing you ever do will be measured in anything but dollars.
After hearing the stories told to me by a teacher friend, I concluded he was right about the "edutainment", as he called it, being in direct conflict with real teaching.
Most of his day was taken up by employing all those tactics that are set up to make learning,"fun". These attempts by the administration to level the learning process with a mix of entertainment were big failures, the kid's were expecting a lot of fun everyday, and, any attempt on his part to create some balance was met by student griping regarding the lack of 'fun" in their studies.
His other complaint was the fact that the schools in those districts with affluent populations were substantialy better schools overall, the low income areas were getting the short end of the budget and thus, spent more time trying to encourage the student to just show up for the 'edutainment".
By the time these kid's reach high school age they are thoroughly indoctrinated in the principle of, life as fun, any deviation from this view would be considered heresy by these new age students as they enter the world of work, I saw pleny of this attitude in the last job I had, the younger folk's were always preoccupied with some kind of socializing and company event planning.
I would venture a guess as to the reason for a huge increase in drop out rates to be the obvious lack of relevance to the world outside of school. Some kid's see this for what it is, and respond with a predictable disdain, leading them to doubt the validity of the administrations claims of education as preparation for real life. They go into the work force, military, or simply a life of drifting, with the sense that something is missing when their life isn't "fun," every moment of the day.
Education was given some consideration in Jeremy Rifkin's book, The End of Work, in it he states the painful truth that children have become functionaly useless, we have to look beyond our schools and ask ourselves what kind of world are we creating for these kid's. The school is just a warehouse, and the demand for it's "product" is greatly diminished, in the meantime the band plays on, as we sit on the sidelines wondering what we'll make of the children who wait to inherit our world.
Since more and more of our unskilled labor is being shipped overseas, I definitely think that our students need a high school diploma. I think it would be worthwhile for teenagers to actually spend some time in an unskilled labor field so they can understand how much they don't want to do back breaking or menial labor for little money. Perhaps then, the importance of education would be more relevant to them.
With the prevalence of reality TV showing us that we don't need to do much to become rich and famous (no matter how small that percentage actually is), my students tend to believe that it is enough to want to be rich and famous without having to actually work for anything.
Like jertheber said, most also express that they feel that everything should be entertaining at all times. They have almost no tolerance for anything that takes time, effort, or is in any way boring. How is that realistic? How entertaining will their lives be if they don't have a high school diploma and have to work at a minimum wage job?
Maybe part of the problem is that they are taught that entertaining them is a priority from a young age. Is it truly necessary for kids to watch a DVD every time they are in the car? Even if its a short trip to the supermarket? When did kids schedules become as hectic as adults? Some of them have more after school activities in a week than I do in a month. I know an 8 year old with a cell phone because she's involved in so many activities that her parents needed a way to keep in touch with her. Kids seem like they are constantly doing something, no wonder they can't tolerate sitting still for 45 minutes doing something boring like math or spelling.
I've been told that I need to lower my expectations of my students. They can't do homework because kids today aren't like we were. Seriously?! How is that helping them? I'm not saying that students should have hours of homework every night, but expecting none is unrealistic too. How else can I tell if a child actually understands what I've taught them, when they are no longer under my direct supervision? We can't test them, because that puts too much pressure on their psyches. Its crazy, on the one hand they are so much more sophisticated and precocious, and on the other, they are treated like they're fragile and feeble.
I don't think there is a simple answer. The only thing I do know, is that the students whose families are wealthy have a lot more expectations placed on them at their private schools, and most rise to the occasion. I think that the divide between the wealthy and the poor is ever widening because of this. Children simply do not rise to low expectations.
I think one factor is the way the education community keeps throwing out the past in favor of some 'new-and-improved technique.' I really do believe that the teaching pedagogy used 100 years ago had it pretty much down. Enter the egghead educational 'researchers.' They constantly do the new-and-improved thing... and then five years later find that it wasn't so great after all. If you want to learn something (academically) you sit your butt down and study. Works most every time. Somewhere along the line, we decided that learning things like math or biology or chemistry is supposed to be entertaining like playing a video game. It's not. If you can't learn self-discipline, you can't really learn much of anything worthwhile.
Yes, ChrisC, I agree. Too much reinventing the wheel. Take for example, the whole phonics versus whole language approach. That pendulum has been swinging back and forth like crazy. A friend who teaches in an elementary school in NYC is not supposed to teach spelling - the kids are supposed to just pick that up from reading. Meanwhile, in HS, I'm back to teaching phonics (under that name of Wilson and/or Rewards) because the kids can't decode multi-syllabic words. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
1) I would make college harder to get into, not easier to get into.
a) I would not let the federal government pay for every kid to go to college. It just cheapens the bachelor's degree if everyone has one.
b) Eliminate all remedial college classes for incoming colege freshman. If their high schools just pushed them through to increase graduation rates, send them back to high school for the remedial classes they need for college and publish the statistics so we know which high schools are churning them out, stupid.
2) Cut, not increase federal funding, for schools not cutting it. Show me some instances where throwing money at the problem has done any good.
3) School vouchers so parents can choose which schools are best and to make the schools more competitive forcing the bad schools that have money poured into them, to die the death they deserve.
4) Eliminate the Department of Education at the federal level. Before 1980, the US had good schools. This is their mission statement: Promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. (4,200 employees and $68.6 billion budget) I give them an F on what comes before the word "and" in their mission statement.
5) Pay parents to homeschool their kids if parents meet certain standards. If small class sizes are ideal then REALLY SMALL class sizes should be even better. The pay is to compensate them, at least a little, for staying home from work. If Department of Education sticks their bureaucratic nose in it, forget I mentioned it.
6) No teacher can teach a high school/junior high school class for which they have no expertise. That means English teachers have no business teaching a math class just because there are more English teachers than math teachers employed at the school.
7) Put more businessmen and women on the Boards of Education, than educators. Let them design the curriculum. Educators have no idea what skills are needed in the real world. Have businessmen and women in the community come in, periodically, and teach classes that can be applied in the real world. Ask them to be the career guidance counselors in high school helping students/giving advice on colleges to attend and classes to take in high school and college applicable to the student's career goals.
I have found that it depends on the state, the tax structure, the attitude of the school board toward education that reflects the attitude of the community as a whole, and the demands of the local employment that direct whether education is necessary or not.
A community that has no progressive employment, where jobs are primarily service jobs with no other hope of achievement, generally caters to that environment. When 65% of your school district's population is on Welfare and food stamps, even WITH employment, there is no hope for the kid who wants to achieve - unless s/he educates her/himself to the point of leaving. School boards are often made up of the undereducated from the area, who do not want the children to move out, and therefore gear the education to the "Johnny feelgood" courses, and even try to discourage higher levels of education, to keep their children, their family's and their neighbor's children, in the same dependent rut. I know of one such district that actually offered a letter jacket to any kid who could score higher than 900 on an SAT - but offered no courses, either regular or remedial, to support that achievement. IF there are a few kids who go on to 'college', they are put in remedial courses for two years to learn basic reading and math skills - and many give up in disgust and go home to work next to mom and dad, engage in downward-spiral behavior, violence and self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior. Where there is no hope of opportunity, no challenge, no goal-setting and no hope of progressive achievement, there is no need to educate oneself.
On the other hand, there are the "poor" communities and states that use their tax dollars wisely. Instead of funding their friends' salaries, the money is spent on classroom supplies and advanced learning techniques. Kids are put into courses that appeal to them, that inspire them - after they are taught the basics of not only readin writin rithmetic, but algebra, chemistry, and the sciences. They are taught that they have these opportunities, and that they CHOOSE to use them or not. Most choose to, because the school is a demanding environment of progressive learning, with rewards like trips and student activities ONLY for those who involve themselves and expect a lot of themselves. Some kids take welding, others biology, others literature and languages, others computer graphics, still others mathematics - and distance learning for basic college courses are available for those who want to go still further while in High school. One teacher may have four levels of computer programming in one class - but children are taught at THEIR achievement levels, not at the level of the lowest common denominator of the class. By the time they get to college, they are already comfortable in that environment, having taken part in the long-distance learning for some of the college courses.
When schools are considered social experiments for the governing boards, the educators, and the students, the lack of personal education and achievement, ongoing challenges, and individual progression of students gives them an overriding hopelessness. When schools are set up to teach and challenge each child to succeed progressively, on his/her own hard work and efforts, then success becomes not just a hope but a driving force in their lives. No matter how much money you throw at them, some will use the extra dollars for their own self-promotion and leave the kids wallowing in their own ignorance - and some will put the money toward even more enhancements and progression for the students.
In summation - teaching students to achieve, to set small goals to achieve large ones, to build upon what they've learned year by year to become whatever and whomever they choose, is education. Babysitting and faddish social experiments, where "everyone gets a prize" eliminates the need and desire for students to achieve their personal best - even and especially if their personal best differs from the student next to them. "No Child Left Behind" should translate into "No Child is the Same" - and they cannot and should not be forced into the same molds, but challenged to go and achieve on their own as well as to seek their own levels. Funding and salaries, as well as teachers' rewards and union demands/contract fulfillments, should not be based on BSAPs or any sort of testing - but on how well the students translate into and produce in society.
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