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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Educators Alarmed by High Dropout Rates Among Teens - Who else |
| 2008-09-20 |
| LOS ANGELES -- Teens choose to drop out of high school for a variety of reasons, and these days, the large numbers of students making that choice is alarming many educators. Couldn't have anything to do with the 3 million illegal immigrants in California. Nah, the 60% dropout rate at, largely Latino, Jefferson High School in LA is a coincidence. More money, that's the ticket. After all, everyone knows illegal immigrants contribute more taxes than they consume. That's why we Californians can't understand the state's inability to balance the budget. It must be that little minority of Trunks in the legislature. If only the Donks could get a 100% majority and a Governor. The educators often hear stories like that of Tanya Stoddard, 37, who dropped out of high school in her senior year. "Right when it happened I felt completely brokenhearted, like a total failure," Stoddard said. "I just felt incomplete." A series of family problems, health and economic woes made school seem irrelevant, Stoddard said, so she left school before graduating and supported herself with a series of odd jobs. In California, educators are using new tracking data called the Statewide Student Identifier System to get a better handle on the dropout rate and where kids end up going. Recently, they were surprised to learn the figures were twice what they originally thought. "When you look at the dropout figures for California, the 24.2 percent figure is totally unacceptable," said Jack O'Connell, the state's superintendent of public instruction. That figure is based on the state's new formula for calculating dropout rates. The method for tracking dropouts varies around the country, and other estimates often are much lower. But any way you count them, the dropout numbers can translate to social problems. "We know that dropouts are much more likely to engage in crime. They're much more likely to be unemployed. They're much more likely to be dependent on welfare," said Russell Rumberger, who heads up the California Dropout Research Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "So they suffer individually as well as society suffering in terms of absorbing all the costs that these dropouts generate." His research shows California dropouts from a single year, the class of 2009 for instance, could cost state and federal governments nearly $50 billion dollars over the course of their lives in lost wages, social programs, incarceration and health care costs. But some students are able to get back on the right track and become role models. It took Stoddard just two years to realize the lack of a high school diploma would hold her back from any kind of real success in life, so she went back to school, earned undergraduate and graduate college degrees and now is planning to pursue a doctorate in education. "If your intention is to drop out, pleased don't," she said. "I can't tell you the heartache that comes with dropping out. Even when you say it doesn't matter, it really does. It will stop you from being able to achieve." O'Connell said one solution, particularly in California, is to invest more in education. Let's tax all the money from the people who have it (except Hollywood) and give it to the people that don't have any. It's the patriotic thing to do. "The state of California today, if you look at dollars per student, we rank 46th out of all 50 states in terms of dollars per student," he said. "That's abysmal." Illegal Immigration Costs California $10.5 Billion Annually Aside from money, experts say the focus should be teacher accountability, which often creates problems with powerful unions. Also important are community involvement and a stronger relationship between school and student, so kids view learning as a priority and not a problem. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #12 Some boomers had a parent or parents who only completed the 8th grade, entered the work force, worked hard during and after the depression, became productive citizens, married, raised families, paid taxes, fought in wars, and stayed out of jail. Government, money and teachers have little to do with personal choices and outcomes. Parential example, motivation, grit, and a swift kick in the arse have about as much to do with staying in school as anything. I do not accept the premise that a lack of education is an excuse or justification for criminal behavior or a ticket into the cult of victimization. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-09-20 20:33 |
| #11 Trailing Wife makes a good point. In the US, we give second and third chances to almost everyone. Sex offenders seem to be an exception. A few like her parents do very well, indeed. Most high school dropouts get locked in to a less prosperous future because of early bad decisions. In other countries, for the most part kids are locked in to an educational path early, before puberty in some cases, with little chance to break out of the preordained path. Late bloomers are out of luck. Kids who drop out of school do have chances later on to reenter, but why give them incentives to drop out at all? I'm talking about government support for children raising infants. It is very costly, especially to the future of those babies. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-09-20 18:28 |
| #10 The educators often hear stories like that of Tanya Stoddard, [age] 37 A proof of the quality of that education being that the example given is of a girl who dropped out because of her family situation, then went back two years later to get her GED certificate, thus essentially graduating from high school. It would have been useful to the discussion had the university-degreed journalist noticed -- and provided perspective on -- what percentage of dropouts are actually merely stop-outs who finish later, and what percentage of those stop-outs go on to get higher degrees. Both my parents, for instance, had to stop out of high school. Both subsequently went on to earn PhDs, and both taught at the graduate level, Daddy as a full professor. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-09-20 14:42 |
| #9 And, once again the solution is not cutting expenditures nor implementing a hefty tax increase... Cooool, so, France is just like California! Hollywood! Sun-tanned babes! Just like in baywatch! Magic. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-09-20 12:45 |
| #8 Two problems can be solved at once, here. To start with, higher education in the US is on the verge of collapse as a system. It has overbuilt on the idea of endlessly increasing student bodies and budgets. Yet at the same time, only a fraction of the degrees given are worth anything. A large portion are crap degrees. So some day soon, business will realize that a college degree just deprives them of four of the most productive employee years. Employees that they have to educate from scratch, anyway. This means that the sign will go up: hiring preference to non-college degree applicants. Once this happens, oddly enough, it will force high school students to get a high school diploma as well. Colleges will still be here, just reduced to what they were originally intended to be. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-09-20 12:39 |
| #7 This article also rates a "Master of the Obvious" graphic. I lived in California for over 20 years starting in the mid 1970's. I went to college later than most folks, on the proverbial Ten-Year Plan of night school while working full time. In any class that required group projects with a written termpaper at the end, I could always tell which members of my group were, like myself, products of K-12 education outside of California...we'd invariably be the only ones who could construct a coherent sentence, never mind a paragraph. California schools - all of them, I don't care where they're located - are nothing more than tax-supported moron factories. Back in the 1980's, I remember talking to an older co-worker whose parents brought her out to California after WWII. In those days, many California schools would bump a kid from a decent Eastern or Midwestern school district ahead by two full grades. Of course, they won't do that now...better to bore the hell out of them and encourage them to add to the dropout rate so the district can whine for more money for "dropout prevention programs." I also found Census data indicating that my old Ohio school district, located in a solidly middle-class but by NO means "rich" district, was sending more kids on to college, with higher SAT scores, than California districts like La Jolla and Beverly Hills. |
| Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) 2008-09-20 12:35 |
| #6 Unfortunately, California already spends a disportionate amount on education. Education spending ought to be reduced. The foolish voters a few years ago passed an initiative giving education the biggest slice of the budget pie. There is a bottomless pit on education spending and it needs to stop. But it can't happen unless voters reverse themselves. Californians have to face the fact that a massive tax increase is staring them squarely in the face. They still have no current operating budget, unless one was concluded this morning. And, once again the solution is not cutting expenditures nor implementing a hefty tax increase...it is to borrow yet more. But, this charade may be ending. Selling bonds and continued borrowing are going to be much more difficult following this financial travesty. California voters better grow up and face problems like adults, not spoiled children. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-09-20 12:26 |
| #5 Between the rampaging illegals, the Donk stranglehold on both the Legislature and the state's 55 electoral votes, and its large cities exhibiting all the wonderful attributes of Calcutta and Beirut, maybe it's time to put a mechanism in the Constitution that would enable booting California out of the Union. |
| Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) 2008-09-20 12:19 |
| #4 "Right when it happened I felt completely brokenhearted, like a total failure, ..." I guess these things are like acts of God: they just happen. /sarcasm |
| Posted by: xbalanke 2008-09-20 12:02 |
| #3 My sarcasm just swept me away in my las post. I also wanted to say something serious. So here goes. Teens should not be making vital decisions for infants. Tens should not have serious responsibilities for infants. Not if you don't want build a system of screwed up, disfunctional kids you grow up to be disfunctional adults who produce more disfunctional kids. What would happen if pregnant teens and their breeders lost their babies to either responsible adult family or responsible strangers? No apartment and massive government assistence to the little mommie. Other grownups would find the best solution for the interests of the infant. Mommie and daddie would go to some rehabilitation camp to finish school and grow up. OK, maybe not quite that, but take the reward out of teenage pregnacies. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-09-20 11:08 |
| #2 Whatever the problem with the dropout rate, throw more money at it. That will fix it right up. No doubt about. Always does the job.Give the kids more support for dropping out of school. Look at how succesful this solution has been for solving the teen pregnacy problem. Subsidize the things you want to reduce. we hardly have a teen mom problem at all, unless you count Alaskan daughters of politicans. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-09-20 10:52 |
| #1 Californians need to have a tea party. |
| Posted by: Betty Grating2215 2008-09-20 10:48 |