© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
Education Week featured a report this week, Diplomas Count: 2008, looking at public school graduation rates nationwide and by state. The top states graduate about 80 percent of their students, while
In 2005
I believe these numbers are correct, but rather than get huffy and distracted by a question of precision of the numbers, we could as easily be upset with the 20-percent dropout numbers in the best states. It is terrible that one out of every five public-school students does not graduate with a free education paid for by taxpayers. So why is it happening?
The answer is that what is leading to students dropping out is not being addressed.
What it takes to address this problem is doing the right things in the right ways at the right time. It is easy to say and hard to do. But we know we are not doing the right things or we would not have half of the students dropping out.
We all pay for high dropout rate
We all pay the price of students dropping out since we fully fund the schools with the expectation all students will graduate. Then, with dropouts, we have societal costs such as increased incarceration, lost earning potential with the resultant loss of ability to pay taxes to return the cost of education and, finally, the damage of higher drug and alcohol use.
Many adults cannot understand dropouts since they see everything from an adult perspective. They know that without a high-school diploma the prospects are grim. They just cannot understand why students would dropout, but they do.
Students drop out at an alarming rate because the system is not sufficiently student-focused. We do not see how very overwhelmed students who are not thriving feel. They see other students doing well in school and know that they cannot.
The problem of dropouts is a problem in elementary schools. Yes, we see it in middle schools as it festers, but to do something about dropouts, the effort must start earlier. It is not whether they come to school the first time already knowing colors and letters, though that does not hurt. Rather, it is a student’s emotional response to his or her early experiences at school. Remember, we spend billions of dollars on education and almost half of the students eventually drop out. With that reality, we can never say that we are doing the right things.
Four areas to address
There are four areas that must be addressed: On a daily basis, the child must have his or her curiosity stimulated; the child must have his or her functional-learning structure dealt with properly; the child must feel safe in the environment; and the child must enjoy the passage of time.
First, curiosity: It is appalling that students come their first day interested in just about everything, but within a short time, many have lost that spark of curiosity. How can that be? While there are so many interesting things to deal with each day, the one thing that they are not in the least interested in is what they spend the most time on.
Our society has become accountability-test crazy. Some schools even keep elementary students in from recess to study extra hard for the accountability tests. These tests have nothing to do with students and everything to do with how the adults will be seen by society. The students in general are bored out of their minds by this activity.
The structural issues focus on an individualistic approach to how students practice what they learn. You do not learn to drive by being taught; rather, you are taught and then have to practice driving effectively to really learn. Students must have proper practice or they will not gain skills. Having the entire class practice together is easy to manage, but does not help the more fragile students. When a student does not thrive in the core area of reading, I look at the reading-practice areas first. Practice is not about the teacher; it is about the student thriving.
Next, the school has to feel safe or students will not thrive. Some people advocate using the Marine approach, with lots of yelling and degrading behavior. It works for young adults who want to be a Marine, but it destroys young elementary students who retreat into themselves when confronted with mean teachers and other students who are mean.
Finally, the students must enjoy the passage of time or nothing good will come of his or her schooling. It does not have to be a carnival, but endless test preparation and those kinds of activities will not improve students’ learning.
The only thing we know is that if we continue to deal with dropouts as we have been, we will continue to have the same dropout rate. If we make school less enjoyable, we are heading in the wrong direction, and the problems will get worse.
The test really is: Do we understand education from the student’s perspective?
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.