AJC investigation: Dropouts in Georgia far higher than reported. Can we fix it?
In a front page Sunday investigation, the AJC shares its discovery – learned through open records requests — that 30,751 students in the Class of 2011 left high school without a diploma, nearly double the 15,590 initially reported.
The jarring difference owes to new federal requirements for counting dropouts, requirements that now put the onus on systems to track students who disappear.
I wonder whether schools have the staff to do what one principal described as intense detective work to hunt missing students.
“It’s going to be something where we all turn into Sherlock Holmes,” and we’re tracking every lead we can. It basically is a guilty-until-proven-innocent format,” Gabe Crerie, principal at Henry County’s Eagle’s Landing High School, said. He and his school’s grad coaches spent seven hours one day this summer, trying to track down 62 suspected dropouts. They found 33 at other schools, Crerie said.
The AJC story by reporters Nancy Badertscher and Kelly Guckian notes that Cherokee County officials considered the old formula suspect 10 years ago, when the state first adopted it. Superintendent Frank Petruzielo issued an edict that school officials document students said to be transferring from the district and to review their dropout data twice a year. That vigilance paid off: Among metro districts, Cherokee had one of the smaller increases in dropouts — 90 — and its grad rate moved 7.3 percentage points, from 82.1 percent to 74.8 percent.
I have to point out the obvious here: Georgia has one of the nation’s lowest graduation rates in part because it has one of the nation’s highest child poverty rates. After decades of writing about schools, I am convinced that we can’t deal with one without addressing the other.
Poor children are not a lost cause, but keeping them in school and on grade level requires an unwavering commitment of time, energy and money, and I sometimes wonder whether we have the will in Georgia to make such a commitment.
Please note that Georgia has never done well with low-income students. There is no golden era of education over which to wax nostalgic. The state’s failure to graduate large numbers of high school students was not a problem a generation ago when mill and factory jobs awaited them. In fact, the promise of cheap, ready labor — along with cheap, ready land — was something that Georgia presented as a selling point to new industries.
Now, little awaits a high school dropout. Industry wants educated workers who are able to adapt and learn new skills quickly.
According to the main AJC story in the Sunday package:
The discrepancy came to light because this year the federal government made all states use a new, more rigorous method to calculate graduation rates. Under the new formula, the state’s graduation rate plunged from 80.9 percent to 67.4 percent, one of the nation’s lowest.
Part of the reason for the decline is that the new formula defines a graduate as someone who earns a diploma in four years, though thousands of students take five years or longer. But the AJC’s analysis shows — for the first time — how much of the discrepancy stemmed from a failure to accurately measure how many students drop out.
For years, inflated graduation rates helped state and local districts meet political pressures and claim success. But undercounting the number of dropouts did nothing for the kids who quit school unnoticed.
“They spent more time trying to fix the numbers, than they did trying to fix the problem,” said Cathy Henson, an advocate for education reform and former state Board of Education chair. “My frustration is that if you’re giving people phony data, then they don’t understand the magnitude, the urgency of the problem.”
The cost to the taxpayer can be high. Dropouts are more likely to spend time in prison and need public assistance at some time in their lives.
In Clayton County, parents were stunned when told local dropout numbers quadrupled under the new formula. “I’m just blown away by those figures,” said Melody Totten, parent of a Clayton County 10th grader and past president of the local PTA council. “The school board should hold the superintendent accountable, and the superintendent, in turn, should hold the schools, principals accountable.”
Education experts have long suspected that the state’s soaring graduation rate was artificially high, rooted in faulty data.
Under the state’s old formula, students who disappeared from a school’s rolls were often written off as transfers without evidence that they had landed in another school. In general, students were only counted as dropouts if they formally declared that they were quitting school, something researchers say they seldom do.
The new method takes the opposite tack, counting a student as a dropout unless the district can show that he or she enrolled elsewhere.
Former State School Superintendent Kathy Cox said some districts, under pressure to graduate more high schoolers, might have looked the other way when students left. “Some of this is catching people who were probably deliberately messing with the system, and some of this is catching what probably is just bad record-keeping,” Cox said.
Current schools chief John Barge is more circumspect. “I can’t say that a system was or wasn’t fudging the numbers,” Barge said in a recent interview. “Do I think there is large-scale people wanting to manipulate the system? I really don’t think so.”
Georgia officials announced in April that the state’s grad rate was 13.5 percent points lower under the new formula. They blamed the fall in part on the undercounting of dropouts but said they had no specifics.
In metro Atlanta, Clayton County Public Schools saw a huge swing, going from 392 dropouts to 1,584 and from an 80.2 percent to a 51.5 percent grad rate, according to the state’s data. Clayton officials had thought they were making headway. Their 2010 grad rate was 81.6 percent, better than the state’s 80.8 percent.
Clayton officials believe that at least some of the newly-reported dropouts could have been legitimate transfers, district spokesman Doug Hendrix said. But they also are taking a hard look at strategies to help students graduate. Those include counselors serving as mentors to every child and parent coordinators out in the community, Hendrix said. “It’s obvious to us there is some work to be done,” he said.
As early as 2009, the AJC reported that some districts were suspected of over-reporting transfers and under-reporting dropouts — two measures that boost graduation rates. In 2010 and 2011, the newspaper reported that thousands of Atlanta Public Schools high school students were taken off the rolls without documentation of where they went, at the same time the district was boasting huge jumps in its grad rate.
The new data shows APS’s dropouts increased from 798 6 to 1,544 and its grad rate went from 69.5 percent to 52 percent with the switch to the new formula. APS spokesman Keith Bromery said more accurate numbers put “us in a better position to know what the reality of the situation is for the district.” The district is creating an early-warning system that will alert teachers and administrations to signs that a student could be on the path to dropping out, Bromery said.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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191 comments Add your comment
Dekalbite@Rep. Lindsey
August 19th, 2012
10:30 pm
Start with the premise that every child deserves:
1. A safe and clean learning environment
2. A highly qualified teacher in a reasonably sized classroom
3. Abundant access to science and technology equipment
Ensure this is happening, and then fund all of the other educational initiatives, training, administrators, programs, community and parent outreach, etc. with what’s left over because the three components listed above are what really work for students. If you can provide those three components listed above, you will attract highly qualified and motivated teachers which will greatly reduce your need (and cost) for excess administrative and support personnel.
Barnes got many things wrong in his education plan, but one area he got right was class size reform. Barnes reduced class size limits and basically let the superintendents figure out how to get to those smaller class sizes – no excuses or exceptions or waivers. Superintendents and administrators were most unhappy, but this was a non negotiable. DeKalb County, arguably the most top heavy system in Georgia, actually saw a decrease in non teaching employees as the superintendent (then Johnny Brown) and the Board of Education were forced to pare down the bureaucratic ranks in order to boost the classroom teaching ranks. That’s the ONLY time in over 40 years in DeKalb that I saw the Central Office shrink. What a difference it made to students and teachers.
There are no shortcuts to teaching and learning. The more disadvantaged the student, the more he/she needs a highly qualified and motivated teacher and the more class size matters to him/her. We live in a world where the jobs of the future depend on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills. If we don’t get this right, we are destined to be a second rate economy.
bootney farnsworth
August 19th, 2012
10:56 pm
@ Ron
I’m really having a hard time taking some of this seriously. possibly due to this sounding so much like the Tricoli disaster at GPC (he came in talking about I really want to hear from you, made promises, and proceed to bankrupt the school), but mostly due to a lack of anything resembling a sincere gesture on the legislature’s part.
we don’t have raises, we don’t have a watchdog, we don’t have a seat at the table -any table-when the legislators start yapping ….and lets not forget our dear friend Fran Millar.
show me SOMETHING. after years of abuse, I need proof of change. otherwise we’re just abused women wanting to believe he really has changed.
Ron F.
August 19th, 2012
11:23 pm
“show me SOMETHING. after years of abuse, I need proof of change. otherwise we’re just abused women wanting to believe he really has changed.”
Not the metaphor I would have chosen, perhaps for its stark, but very realistic truth, but you speak right to the heart of it. We get platitudes, double-talk, and smoke and mirrors routines until it’s all just a blur of noise and gestures. And that’s exactly what they, in general with a few noteworthy exceptions, want. They hope the truth will be lost in the 24 hour news cycle, and generally that happens. I remember sitting, mouth hanging open, when our super showed us the numbers I posted earlier. Once you see them in black and white, you can’t help but pull off the blinders and ask WTF? As I’ve posted often on other threads, this is exactly why I don’t trust their enthusiasm for the charter commission amendment. If they’re lying to us, then what aren’t they telling the charter folks? And I won’t even start on Fran…
Have a good night and a good week with the kiddies!
AUBOB01
August 19th, 2012
11:25 pm
I think any “student” who drops out without medical or family hardship, should pay back the State for their previous years of education. It can be paid either through wage garnishments or community service!
mountain man
August 20th, 2012
6:32 am
Dr. Monica Henson – “If the American public school system truly valued education, we’d make high school a place where students could and would do anything to stay and complete.”
If the American STUDENTS truly valued education, then THEY would do anything to stay and complete.
There, I fixed your sentence. You really should get new glasses.
mountain man
August 20th, 2012
6:35 am
“Really? One-third of the population of this country aged 16-18 just doesn’t give a damn?”
That is correct. They care more about skipping school, or being in a gang, or committing crimes, or, probably the most common – creating or having babies. They also worry that if the get an education they will be accused of “acting too white”.
mountain man
August 20th, 2012
6:36 am
“Really? One-third of the population of this country aged 16-18 just doesn’t give a damn?”
And why should they care about an education when studies show a lot of these inner-city kids don’t think they will even be ALIVE past their 21st birthday! How do you convince them that education is a good thing?
Howard Finkelstein
August 20th, 2012
6:39 am
Can we fix it? NO. It cannot be fixed, repaired etc. Its just a fact of life that some students drop out for a nyriad of reasons. Lets focus on helping students who remain in school
Ya cant save everyone.
Mitch
August 20th, 2012
6:39 am
These rates are based on 4 years of high school. If you track the numbers for a diploma to age 25, you will find the rate is close to 90 percent, due to the GED program.
catlady
August 20th, 2012
6:44 am
I don’t think this news is a blinding flash for most educators. We knew the numbers were inaccurate, no matter how our schools were bragging about them, because we knew the kids that “disappeared” were still around.
catlady
August 20th, 2012
6:48 am
Ms. Downey, again, I call on the AJC investigative team to find out about and expose the RTI “scam” that Georgia embraced several years ago.
Pride and Joy
August 20th, 2012
6:56 am
To Moutain Man
YOu asked “How do you convince them that education is a good thing?”You haul their butts to a prison for a visit. You show them all the men who are far beyond the age of 21 and rotting in jail. You let the inmates tell them what life is like in there and then do the same at the homeless shelters.
teacher&mom
August 20th, 2012
7:08 am
@Dr.Monica Henson: Will your online charter school diploma be accepted by all branches of the military? I’ve worked for an accredited online charter in the past and the only branch that would accept the diploma was the Army.
Judy
August 20th, 2012
7:11 am
Amazing, you are so focused on not funding charter schools. Well, for years district run schools have been fully funded and it has now been exposed (district leaders already knew this) that our drop out rate is one of the worst in the country. Oh, it is about the money – not the students. Let parents and students make the CHOICE! I would love to see the break down of non graduates per school district.
Another view
August 20th, 2012
7:32 am
Poverty + Low Graduation Rates = Georgia HS Cheating Scandal.
td
August 20th, 2012
8:28 am
Anything to cover up the real news in how Obama has actually cut medicare and how Dems are actually telling our veterans that they are “gutless”.
Those are REAL stories Jim.
Dekalbite
August 20th, 2012
8:28 am
Start with the premise that every child deserves:
1. A safe and clean learning environment
2. A highly qualified teacher in a reasonably sized classroom
3. Abundant access to science and technology equipment
Ensure this is happening, and then fund all of the other educational initiatives, training, administrators, programs, community and parent outreach, etc. with what’s left over because the three components listed above are what really work for students. If you can provide those three components listed above, you will attract highly qualified and motivated teachers which will greatly reduce your need (and cost) for excess administrative and support personnel.
Barnes got many things wrong in his education plan, but one area he got right was class size reform. Barnes reduced class size limits and basically let the superintendents figure out how to get to those smaller class sizes – no excuses or exceptions or waivers. Superintendents and administrators were most unhappy, but this was a non negotiable. DeKalb County, arguably the most top heavy system in Georgia, actually saw a decrease in non teaching employees as the superintendent (then Johnny Brown) and the Board of Education were forced to pare down the bureaucratic ranks in order to boost the classroom teaching ranks. That’s the ONLY time in over 40 years in DeKalb that I saw the Central Office shrink. What a difference it made to students and teachers.
There are no shortcuts to teaching and learning. The more disadvantaged the student, the more he/she needs a highly qualified and motivated teacher and the more class size matters to him/her. We live in a world where the jobs of the future depend on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills. If we don’t get this right, we are destined to be a second rate economy.
td
August 20th, 2012
8:28 am
Wrong blog. Sorry
Whirled Peas
August 20th, 2012
8:32 am
Our school system is broken and cannot be fixed by repairing this or that. The best way to fix the system is to introduce competition. Privatize the schools, give the kids vouchers to attend the best school they can, and let the parents make the decision where their kids go to school. Good schools will thrive and bad schools will wither and die. Good teachers will be paid more and bad teachers will be looking for other jobs. That is the way it should be.
Dr. John Trotter
August 20th, 2012
8:44 am
Let’s see now. Clayton’s graduation rate is really 51.5% Hmm. And this school board, by a vote of 6 to 3, just extended Edmond Heatley’s contract for one more year. Ha! What planet is Mary Baker and Pam Adamson and Alieka Anderson and the others living on? This man should have been gone from this school system years ago. He should never have been hired. I have written extensively about this clown of a superintendent, Edmond Heatley.
http://www.georgiateachersspeakout.com
JoJO
August 20th, 2012
9:11 am
The answer plain and simple: Career & Technical Education at the high school level!
HoneyFern School
August 20th, 2012
9:51 am
Excellent point, Maureen, about how the needs of companies have changed, but you back off and don’t point out that schools are not changing to address it. That is an unfortunate lack of critical attention.
Also not addressed? The 40% of students in GA that require remedial classes in college when they do graduate.
Tell the whole story; it’s not just a numbers game. There are kids behind that stats, and we are failing them.
mountain man
August 20th, 2012
12:22 pm
“If you track the numbers for a diploma to age 25, you will find the rate is close to 90 percent, due to the GED program.”
Once again, GED’s are not “graduating”. And I still do not believe the 90% statistic.
mountain man
August 20th, 2012
12:25 pm
Dekalbite – “Start with the premise that every child deserves:
1. A safe and clean learning environment
2. A highly qualified teacher in a reasonably sized classroom
3. Abundant access to science and technology equipment”
You could have all these and you would still have the same drop-out rate. You have not addressed the STUDENT. The only one that even comes close to tackling an issue is the SAFE part – by increasing discipline.
Dekalbite@mountain man
August 20th, 2012
2:40 pm
“The only one that even comes close to tackling an issue is the SAFE part – by increasing discipline.”
Discipline is naturally an enormous part of a safe and clean learning environment. BTW – teachers have no control over any of these components. These are the components that the school system administrators and support personnel are supposedly paid to ensure students and teachers have.
“You could have all these and you would still have the same drop-out rate. You have not addressed the STUDENT.”
By STUDENT, do you really mean the parents? Because IMHO – teachers cannot change parents or the home life that students are raised in. We are not politicians, psychologists, or social workers. We should be able to do what we are paid to do – teach. At the very least if we and our students are assured a safe and clean environment with a reasonable classroom size and abundant access to science and technology, we have a much greater chance of TEACHING and students LEARNING rather than if we are asked to be surrogate parents and “culture of the day” deliverers.
If you do not believe any of these three components will help students, then the converse is…..
Students do NOT deserve:
1. A safe and clean learning environment
2. A highly qualified teacher in a reasonably sized classroom
3. Abundant access to science and technology equipment
Now how many highly qualified teachers want to teach in:
1. An unsafe and dirty learning environment
2. Classes with huge numbers of students (35 to 40)
3. No access to science and technology equipment
Following your conclusion to its logical end, why not divide the students into the teachable and non teachable groups in Kindergarten and send the non teachables home to save us taxpayers a lot of money?
Not all students will be successful even with these three most important components, and unfortunately the expectation of the day is that every child is successful in school. However, more students will be successful if they have what they need in the classroom.
Dekalbite@mountain man
August 20th, 2012
2:52 pm
“The only one that even comes close to tackling an issue is the SAFE part – by increasing discipline.”
Discipline is naturally an enormous part of a safe and clean learning environment. BTW – teachers have no control over any of these components. These are the components that the school system administrators and support personnel are supposedly paid to ensure students and teachers have.
“You could have all these and you would still have the same drop-out rate. You have not addressed the STUDENT.”
By STUDENT, do you really mean the parents? Because IMHO – teachers cannot change parents or the home life that students are raised in. We are not politicians, psychologists, preachers, or social workers. We are teachers and should be expected to do what we are paid to do – teach. At the very least if we and our students are assured a safe and clean environment with a reasonable classroom size and abundant access to science and technology, we have a much greater chance of TEACHING and students LEARNING rather than if we are asked to be surrogate parents and “culture of the day” deliverers.
If you do not believe any of these three components will help students, then the converse is…..
Students do NOT deserve:
1. A safe and clean learning environment
2. A highly qualified teacher in a reasonably sized classroom
3. Abundant access to science and technology equipment
Now how many highly qualified teachers want to teach in:
1. An unsafe and dirty learning environment
2. Classes with huge numbers of students (35 to 40)
3. No access to science and technology equipment
If you are a parent, is a dirty, unsafe bare bones environment with a not very well educated teacher in a classroom of 38 other students what you want for your child?
Following your conclusion to its logical end, why not divide the students into the teachable and non teachable groups in Kindergarten and send the non teachables home to save us taxpayers a lot of money?
Not all students will be successful even with these three most important components, and unfortunately the expectation of the day is that every child is successful in school. However, more students will be successful if they have what they need in the classroom, and these three components are needs not wants for students.
Dekalbite@mountain man
August 20th, 2012
2:54 pm
Sorry for the double post. Being caught in the filter for some reason.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 20th, 2012
2:59 pm
mountain man posted, “…why should they care about an education when studies show a lot of these inner-city kids don’t think they will even be ALIVE past their 21st birthday! How do you convince them that education is a good thing?”
When needy schools warehouse kids year after year in shoddy, depressing buildings, put them through an assembly line that includes several low-quality teachers over the years, even series of long-terms subs in lieu of an actual certified teacher, with drill-and-kill instruction, why on earth WOULD they value education? This may be a news flash to a lot of people, but when kids spend year upon year getting their time wasted hour after hour, they become disengaged way before high school.
I’ve yet to see a kindergartener show up for the first day of school saying, “I want to raise Cain and make my teacher angry every day. I want to keep my classmates from learning. I’ll lay my head on my desk and sleep through my classes.”
We have beautiful, precious, bright-eyed children starting kindergarten every year all over this country, and a substantial percentage of them, within their first three to four years of public schooling, will learn the sad and terrible truth: that their school is not a happy place for everyone, that a good number of their teachers are not very good at what they do, that some of their teachers don’t really like children that much, that some kids are lucky and get put in the “good” classes with the best teachers, and that the people who run their schools don’t really care about whether or not they learn, as long as the lucky kids do.
If I had been treated that way in school, I sure as hell might not have made it all the way to graduation. I was one of the lucky kids who was always put in the “top” track of classes, and I was still bored most of the time and felt that high school was something to be endured.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 20th, 2012
3:04 pm
teacher&mom: Our eCourses curriculum is AdvancEd-accredited, MSA-accredited, and NCAA-approved, so there is no reason for the military branches to treat us as anything other than a top-tier high school. If memory serves me correctly, the U.S. Dept. of Education and Dept. of Defense issued an announcement within the past year that state-approved virtual high schools would be treated just like brick-and-mortar public high schools.
Mountain Man
August 20th, 2012
4:33 pm
“We have beautiful, precious, bright-eyed children starting kindergarten every year all over this country,”
Maybe… but you also have hungry children, and you have children who are NOT at school since their parent (mother) is too lazy to get them up for the bus.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 20th, 2012
10:19 pm
Mountain Man: the hungry children and the ones whose mothers are too lazy to do what should be done for them are the primary reason why I do what I do. If they don’t have an advocate at school, which for many of them should be the safest place they can be, then we as a society have failed the most vulnerable members of our population. That’s not liberal BS, it’s not educational jargon–it’s the simple truth, and that’s the sad case for many kids.
crankee-yankee
August 20th, 2012
10:39 pm
Judy
August 20th, 2012
7:11 am
In the 24 years I have been teaching in GA, QBE has NEVER been fully funded. A fact Rep. Lindsey admits to on August 19th, 2012 @ 3:16 pm. Know your facts.
MsFix_IT
August 20th, 2012
11:00 pm
Dr. Henson,
I obtained my GED and last year I made over 80K. I attended College on scholarship. So I really take offense to your comments about students that leave High School and receive a GED. Unfortunately,
most High School Students that graduate in GA cannot pass the GED test. Again, we must create an educational system that bridges the gaps between Public and Private education. We have to bring back vocational education and teach children how to think, as well as follow directions.
I pay school taxes even though I don’t have any children. I know it is part of my duty as a citizen to help ensure our kids are able to thrive.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 20th, 2012
11:24 pm
MsFIX_IT, I didn’t mean any offense to anyone who has earned a GED, and it definitely has a place in the educational structure. The truth is, however, that you are an exception to the average GED holder in the extent of your success. The statistics are what they are. There are also people who drop out of high school and don’t get any credential at all, yet become very successful–they are also exceptions and are few & far between compared to many, if not most people who drop out and then don’t build substantial earning power over their lifetimes.
I admire you greatly for having the perseverance to further your education, and I have no doubt that you will continue to be successful!
Dr. Monica Henson
August 20th, 2012
11:26 pm
I have a very good friend who quit high school at age 17, back in the 1970s, apprenticed himself to a local business owner who didn’t have any sons, and eventually bought the business and operated it very successfully for 25 years. Nowadays, it’s a lot harder for people who quit high school to be able to find a job that will provide them with enough to support themselves and a family. It’s especially hard for teenaged girls who become mothers before they finish their educations.
MsFix_IT
August 21st, 2012
1:57 am
Dr. Henson,
Instead of trying to just prove our points; how are we going to make this situation better for today’s students? Our kids are bright and have more of an ability to obtain an education with the technological advances of today. We are missing the keys to them thriving in school or in a learning environment.We really have to accept that we need to address the needs of industry and build vocational education. I have several trades and college but, my trades have allowed me to make more money, than my college education.
Now, the pragmatic solution is to have internships at the Jr. High and Freshman High School level. Being able to apply what you learn to the workplace will give a child focus. I experienced this when working in a small grocery store at the age of 10. Being able to count change back to a customer is basic math applied. We have to find a way to make instruction that is within the application of work and that would give the lesson functionality. I am not a teacher, I am a Grandparent, but I am concerned that all children receive an education.
But the real question is; what is a true education? Is it really measured by test scores or living well?
Dr. Henson, you write about teenage girls becoming mothers, how do we deal with a society that gives men a pass on being accountable and responsible? In every society Women are still second class citizens. I work in the Information Technology sector and I am basically the lone female. I still am require to be three times as good a man and to receive less pay. Women are raped into submission in our communities or their self esteem is damaged by the encyclical patterns of not having good male role models. We have male predators that molest young girls and then the next thing you know the young woman is pregnant, scared and ashamed. How do we battle this cultural norm?
What we need to do is help make our students responsible for there education. We need to foster an environment that makes learning fun and engaging. We need to model our system after schools that have more success and emulate what is good for our children. Everything a child needs to learn to graduate High School should be complete by 9th Grade. The last three years the students need to be learning a trade or be fast tracked for a College education in a field inwhich they have excelled. It has worked in Germany, South America and other countries. Because we, Americans look to a few to excel and become great thinkers or inventors, we have left the public school system for the commoners and serfs. We need to teach our kids how to first; follow directions; second; the application of knowledge and third, how to think and be intutive to the situations around them.
This is how people have risen out of poverty; they had a vision of something greater than themselves.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 21st, 2012
8:53 am
MsFIX_IT, you make such tremendous points! I am in complete agreement with the idea of career & trade exploration (real, substantive, meaningful experiences) starting in junior high school and extending all throughout high school. Not every student needs to spend four years in high school. The education establishment has for decades emphasized the supposed value of academics over vocational education, as though choosing a trade is somehow “lesser” than earning a university degree. Economic reality is that many people who go into vocations requiring practical preparation fare much better on the earnings scale than say, teachers, who must earn a bachelor’s degree at minimum. Academics at the middle and high school grades need to be relevant and meaningful to all students, not just the college-bound. The American public high school as a whole is staggeringly irrelevant to millions of kids. Notable exceptions in Georgia include the College & Career Academies, which are partnerships among entire communities with local employers, technical colleges, and district high schools.
I don’t know the answer to the cultural issue of disempowerment of women. I do know that the girls I have known personally who became mothers too early have largely gone on to get at least some college after they saw the economic reality facing themselves and their kids, unless they were fortunate enough to have a family that owns its own business and can employ them and help them with child care. It’s a tough situation, and it impacts females far more heavily than it does males. Having a baby when you’re a teenager, without some kind of support and help, is like jumping off the economic cliff for most girls.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 21st, 2012
8:57 am
From MsFIX_IT: “We need to teach our kids how to first; follow directions; second; the application of knowledge and third, how to think and be intutive to the situations around them. This is how people have risen out of poverty; they had a vision of something greater than themselves.”
This sentiment permeates the Magic Johnson Foundation and is one of the greatest benefits that Provost Academy Georgia will bring to our students in the cities where we open our Magic Johnson Bridgescape learning centers. Magic Johnson Enterprises has a wonderful employability inventory that our kids will be able to take in order to see the attributes that all employers look for. MJE will work with our students to customize their workforce readiness preparation, such as cultivating relationships with local employers to provide our kids with job shadows, internships, and mentoring. These experiences will not only enrich our students’ educations, but it will show them the light at the end of the academic preparation tunnel.
Million Book Read
August 21st, 2012
4:15 pm
This is a disturbing news! The education system has to be changed!
Ron F.
August 21st, 2012
5:13 pm
“The American public high school as a whole is staggeringly irrelevant to millions of kids.”
The reality is, at one time we had vocational high schools for the kids who weren’t college bound, with graduation requirements that reflected that choice. It’s been a reality since the dawn of the public school system that high school wasn’t for everyone. After 1983 and that god-awful “A Nation at Risk”, we panicked and the fearmongers went nuts. The currriculum designers and book companies jumped up and offered alllllllll manner of foolishness to “fix” the problems. They made a lot of money, and we as a society adopted the notion that we weren’t keeping up with the Japanese. Since then, we’ve added more and more to try to “increase rigor”, and where are we? That’s precisely why I am dubious about ANY “we can fix this and do it quickly” method out there. Not to say that yours isn’t an important part of what we can do, but how many times are we going to redesign the wheel and how much money is it going to take to get people to realize school isn’t relevant to many because all we did was what the politicians and citizens said we had to do? Schools didn’t just decide to run the bus into the ditch; schools are what they are precisely because we did what we were told to do.
The school system didn’t create this mess, society and those it deemed worthy of decision-making power did. While I think you genuninely are trying to do something about that, and while I respect your zeal for what you are doing, it’s hard to give a lot of support when you keep blaming us for the problems so your “solution” can look better. Brag about what you’re doing: it sounds like you may be on to something. But every time you trash us in the public system to try to make your system look better, it just isn’t helping score points with a voting bloc you really need to have on your side for this amendment to pass in November.
MsFix_IT
August 22nd, 2012
1:29 am
Dr. Henson,
Please contact me, I would love to help. ML_Cox46@comcast.net. We have to work together for our children.