Throughout America’s communities today, the quality of schooling varies from school to school. In the book Our Kids the author, Robert Putnam, believes that the increased gap between the wealthy and poor is what causes the differences in school quality and opportunities for the students (Putnam, 2015). Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing two of today’s youth, Josh and Erin. Their names have been changed for the sake of anonymity. Josh is a 17-year-old student at Shawnee Mission East High School, in Prairie Village, Kansas.…
In the article The Right to Fail, William Zinsser believes that the word dropout should not always have negative connotations. Persons who are under a certain age and leave school, or drop out, are often considered failures by societies set standards. Zinsser believes these standards set by society makes failing an almost unspeakable act and that the media, through advertisements and commercials, shows successful people living an American dream, filled with happiness, not the failure associated with dropouts.…
Public high school graduation rates can be used as a tool to measure the effectiveness of a particular education program. However, choosing a formula that accurately reflects the strength and weaknesses of a high school has proven to be quite difficult and even controversial. In 2010, the Newark Public School district reported a 55 percent graduation rate among Newark City high schools (Newark Public Schools, pg 4). However, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie challenges the NPS’s findings. Christie argues that, “The Newark City graduation rate is 29 percent”(Christie 4.29). Both claims, stemming from low Newark City graduation rates, seem to conflict with the 94.7 percent graduation rate reported by the State of New Jersey in 2010 (NJPS: Fact Sheet).These inconsistencies indicate that the different ways of interpreting graduation rates may be exploited to reflect the interests of a person or group. Because of this, it is important to analyze and interpret the graduation rates reported to ensure that the claims are an accurate representation of the data.…
In the video “Dropout Nation” it follows the students of Sharptowns High school in Houston Texas. The documentary looks into four of their students with troubled backgrounds. The high school has more of a minority population and their graduate rates are pretty low. Most of the kids drop out the first year of high school, and others go as far as senior year, but drop out at the last minute. The teachers and administration do the best they can to keep their students from dropping out and completing high school. Each of the four students all had different stories and different outcomes. Only one out of the four students shows in the video, graduated. Two of the four dropped out completely and did not go back to school, and the other one retuned…
The article discusses the problem of school dropouts in Seminole, Florida. The high school drop-out rate has reached crisis proportions in the United States. Minority students are at greatest risk of dropping out of high school. The minorities at greatest risk, in rank order, are Native Americans, Hispanics, and African-Americans. The potential health hazard of tobacco and pending Florida tobacco tax legislation threaten to reduce Seminole tobacco sales. The acknowledgement by tribal leaders that education is key to future diversification is seen as critical. Many tribal members believe that reducing the student drop-out rate is the long-term answer to diversification. A major issue to be resolved before progress can be made on the problem…
According to the U.S. department of education an estimated 1.2 million U.S. high school students drop out annually, left with no degree, no qualifications and no work experience. The American education system is based on the idea that no child should be left behind -opportunity for all. However, encouraging everyone to attend university regardless of how impractical it may be for the individual, is part of the problem.…
For my entire life of schooling, both my parents and I would agree that I constantly complained about the educational systems in which I was enrolled. But when I actually take the time to think about everything I have been through, I realize that I have indeed had an excellent education. My schooling was full of opportunities and experiences, all of which contributed to the person I am today; adequate education has been an indispensable facet of my being. Sadly, not everyone has had this same privilege. And now as a college student, I am becoming even more aware of this sad fact. Looking around me in such a diverse city as Chicago, I find myself being more and more grateful. When I read Jonathan Kozol's Fremont High School, this these feelings were even more reassured.…
Students’ dropping out of high school has become an ongoing phenomenon throughout the nation. High school dropouts will face many challenges throughout their lives. The attainment of various skills and higher levels of education are very important in today’s competitive world and economy. High school dropouts, on average earn less money, are more likely to end up in jail, are less likely to be married, and are most likely to be unhappier than high school graduates. Even though education gaps hav,e soared to new heights, dropout rates throughout the past three decades have been mostly unchanged. This problem highly affects minorities and low-income students. The primary goal of this paper is to provide a plan to lower the high school dropout…
2. Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia 's Dropout Crisis, 2000–05. Retrieved from – http://www.csos.jhu.edu/new/Neild_Balfanz_06.pdf…
In many ways I can relate to lawrence, Sparkle, Marcus and Marco. Everyday at school there are the same kind of problems that all of the students in dropout nation are having. For example how sparkle has a kid and left school, or how Marcus was always high and late for school, and how Lawrence had anger issues and went off on a lot of people even the ones that tried to help him. Students at my school come into school high and late for classes, most of them have anger issues and they will go off on teachers when they try to help. Students in our school will give up when things get hard. The teachers and principal still try and help because they care about the students and they want them to graduate.…
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” this is an inspirational quote by Winston Churchill, which can lead as an example to all the students in the United States that have dropped out of high school. According to dosomething.org, the U.S, which had some of the highest graduation rates of any developed country, now ranks 22nd out of 27 developed countries. Stress, low self-esteem, and poor support from family members are all responsible for leading students to dropping out of high school. However, the United States have been improving in that area and they’ve been efficiently, increasing the number of students that earn a high school diploma. Ultimately, the amount of students that have dropped…
In today’s economic turmoil, schools have been receiving budget cuts across the board. A perfect example would be Lamar University of Texas whose budget was cut by 15 million dollars (Moore) just this year. Furthermore Lamar University lost 120 employees (Moore). Since schools are getting money taken away from them they have to seek elsewhere to recuperate what they have lost; as a result colleges and universities have increased their tuition. We see that the rise in tuition is keeping low and moderate income students from ever attending a higher education institute (Zaho). On the same note Kindergarden-12th grade schools now have more students per classroom, meaning more students less teachers. This effects how much a teacher can teach a student overall, and how much attention one teacher can focus on one student throughout the year. The desired teacher to student ratio is now encroached upon. “There are less supplies, less teachers, less field trips, less extracurricular activities” said Principal Marshall; he later went on to say “The money being taken from education is lowering the overall quality of education” (McCartney).…
I couldn't imagine my life if I dropped out of high school. What would my parents say? Where would I live? What kind of job would I get? Watching this story I thought about the schools that my family members and friends attend , in fact I saw alot of kids in there that I know who are like the four students in this documentay, Sparkle, Lawrence, Marcus, and Marco issues that affect them like alcoholic parents, no parental guidance, deportations and fear of missing out on non-important things.…
We citizens of the United States of America have had a lot of evolvement of the years. Funding for many schools and homes has dropped. In many big city’s there are people including children are stuck to sleep outside or in unhealthy homes.…
Despite the sharp decrease in the dropout rate in rural America between the years 1975 and 1993 which essentially closed the gap between the urban and rural dropout rates, over 10 percent of rural students still do not finish high school and have difficulty finding gainful employment (e.g., Paasch & Swaim, 1995). Graduation is an extremely important milestone in the life of an individual as they prepare for adult life (Paasch & Swaim, 1995). For instance, high school graduates have a greater chance of finding employment and making higher incomes (Child Trends, 2014), earning up to $8,000 per year more than a non-graduate (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2015). Also, high school graduates are healthier, less likely to involved in criminal…