As Dropout Nation readers know, one of the consequences of the nation’s education crisis can be seen in the shortages of high-skilled workers for blue-collar jobs. With Baby Boomers working in sectors such as railroad transportation heading into retirement, companies are now competing against one another for the small numbers of workers with strong math and science skills, including those who spent the past few years in the high-skilled areas of the nation’s armed forces.

An example of this was exemplified last week when the Wall Street Journal reported on railway giant Union Pacific’s struggles to hire diesel electricians (who earn as much as $61,000 a year for keeping train engines running smoothly), and installation technicians (who earn as much as $68,0000 just for handling the  cables and microwave relays used to monitor the coming and going of trains). It took the company 10 hiring rounds just to hire 24 diesel electricians; just a fifth of the 58 initial applicants had the skills at aptitude needed for the installation technician jobs Union Pacific was seeking to fill.

Certainly the harsh realities of working on railroads deters some from even trying out for jobs. But Union Pacific’s struggles to hire skilled workers isn’t isolated. As more Baby Boomers head into retirement, companies are struggling to fill such positions as welders and machinists, high-skilled blue-collar jobs that provide the kind of incomes that lift poor kids from poverty into the middle class. And these are positions that no longer involve simply standing on an assembly line. Factory workers will need to be able to understand trigonometric equations in order to ensure that products are shaped properly and fit together upon assembly — and think through abstract concepts in order to work on their own on the factory floor.

But companies are having trouble filling those jobs largely because there aren’t enough young men and women with the science and math skills needed for success. Forty percent of all high school seniors  scored Below Basic on the science portion of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress; 27 percent of the nation’s eighth-graders — including half of all black students and a fifth of white students — were mathematically illiterate according to NAEP’s 2011 exam.

The problem is particularly acute for poor children, especially those whose parents never graduated themselves. Sixty-two percent of high school seniors whose parents didn’t graduate from high school were scientifically illiterate; 59 percent of eighth-graders who were on free-and-reduced lunch plans were mathematically illiterate. As a result, children from poor households have also shot of taking on the kind of high-paying jobs, blue-collar or white-collar that can actually help them emerge into the middle class.

Some, including Ronald Ferguson and Robert Schwartz of Harvard in their wrongheaded Pathways to Prosperity report, would argue that this calls for new vocational high schools similar to those of earlier generations. But the reality is that sending kids on a vocational track doesn’t make sense. For one, most teens don’t know what career paths they want to be on until they reach their 20s; as the High Tech High chain of charter schools has found, only three in 10 kids who choose such a track even work in that field for one day.

More importantly, the kind of high-level math and science skills they need for success in blue-collar fields are also needed for white-collar jobs; in short, a kid attending a tech school or apprenticeship after graduating from K-12 will need the same kind of college-level skills as a counterpart going to a traditional college. In short, whether you are a marketing executive working with statistics, or a machine tools foreman on the shop floor, you will need the same math skills to do the work.

If anything, the solution isn’t to go back to the kind of ability tracking — and low expectations for poor and minority kids — that has helped foster the nation’s education crisis. It is to provide every child a rigorous college-preparatory education that allows them to be prepared to choose any form of higher education — be it traditional college, technical school, or apprenticeships — and, ultimately, any career path.  But college preparatory teaching need not be simply working on algebraic equations in classrooms. As seen with the Minddrive program in Kansas City, Mo., in which students learn the uses of 3D modeling, trigonometry, and electrical engineering in designing and building cars, it is also important to help all kids see the connections between the trigonometry and calculus work they do in classrooms and the real world activities upon which math and science concepts are built.

Meanwhile we must also improve math and science education at the early grades. Not only does this mean improving how we train elementary school teachers, it means changing how they work. As Dropout Nation has noted, value-added data is now revealing that teachers who strong in teaching math may not be capable of teaching reading and vice versa. Developing new ways of instruction — including even putting together teams of top-notch math teachers to help struggling math students succeed — is key. So is improving math instruction before kids get into first grade. As a study of 177 kids followed from kindergarten into high school by a University of Missouri team led by David Geary has shown, kids need to understand numbers and quantity in order to progress successfully in other math studies.

We will need everyone, including Corporate America, to push for these reforms and to expand the array of high-quality school options so that kids can get the math and science education they need for success. But, as I noted in today’s American Spectator review of Dr. Steve Perry’s Push Has Come to Shove, parents will also need to play a major role in demanding schools to improve early math (and reading) curricula, and providing intensive interventions for those kids who, no matter what their parents may do, may be struggling and on the path to academic and economic failure. Our economy and society can’t succeed if companies can’t fill jobs and kids aren’t educated to qualify for them.

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Dropout Nation has offered its own reasons for why states should take full control of school funding instead of just funding 48 percent of the spend. The fact that school districts can continue to use their dependence on property tax dollars to oppose reforms — especially school choice and Parent Power — is one reason. But as Contributing Editor Michael Holzman points out, continuing to derive school funding from property tax dollars contributes to the ineffectiveness of American public education.

A good example of American Exceptionalism is the way that schools are funded here.  In most other developed countries, schools are funded from general taxation. Much of the financial support for American schools, in contrast, is derived from local property taxes. This means that the amount of support available per student is not equalized, as in some countries, or “challenged-based,” as in Britain, for example, but is based on the local tax rate and the value of the property subject to school taxes.  This results in wide variations between districts.

Take Connecticut, one of the states with the widest variations in both support for education and educational outcomes.  The Bridgeport school district had approximately $2,500 to spend on each student from local sources.  The Westport school district had $18,500.

Another is Florida. Five districts have local revenue under $2,000 per student.  Five districts have revenue over $10,000 per student.

One way to look at this is that some people pay much higher school taxes than others.  (Although, paradoxically, the actual tax rates in some poorer areas are higher than in wealthier areas near-by.)  Another way to look at it is that some children go to much less well-supported schools than others.

Neither seems either effective or fair, does it?

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Photo courtesy of the Black Children's Institute of Tennessee

This week, Dropout Nation introduces its latest contributor. Michael Holzman, a Research Consultant for the Schott Foundation for Public Education, has helped shed light on the impact of low teacher quality and systemic academic failure on the educational and economic prospects of young black men. Through his research, Holzman and Schott have done plenty to show in numbers the depths of the nation’s dropout crisis and the impact on young black men. Along with Robert Balfanz, Jay P. Greene and Christopher Swanson, Holzman is one of the leading figures in revealing the nation’s educational decay.

In this piece, Holzman analyzes the results from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress and reminds us that we must do more to help all children succeed in school and in life.

The results from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have shown that there has been little change from the achievement gaps recorded in 2009. On the other hand, there has been some progress this century. These charts show the changes in the gap between the average NAEP scale scores of Black and White fourth- and eighth-grade students in American public schools:

In fourth-grade reading, the gap has declined from 34 points to 24 points, and declined from 30 points to 25 in math. The White, non-Hispanic/Hispanic gaps and changes were virtually identical.) In eighth-grade reading,  the gap has declined from 27 to 24 points, while declining from 40 to 31 points in math.

This is good news. But at this rate it will take 30 years to close the gap among fourth-graders in all grades — and eight graders in mathematics. And it will take 80 years to close the gap among 8th-graders in reading.

Does anyone think that is good enough? It is not good enough to accomplish the goals President Barack Obama has for increasing the number of college graduates by 2020.  It is particularly troubling that the gap in reading is virtually identical in fourth and eighth grade while achievement gaps increase as kids move from elementary to middle school.

What is to be done? Through its Opportunity to Learn Campaign, the Schott Foundation wants to ensure that all kids have access to high-quality early childhood education and a challenging curriculum.  The NAEP outcomes show that these key factors are not yet in place. We would have all children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn their letters and numbers. We would have all middle school students challenged with courses that will put them on the road to graduating on time, ready for college and career. And we know it can be done.

A version of this piece is available at Schott’s Opportunity to Learn blog.

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As an outlet focused solely on covering the reform of American public education, Dropout Nation rarely ventures into discussing other issues. But the indictment of former Pennsylvania State University defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for allegedly molesting eight young at-risk young men — and revelations that his legendary former boss, Joe Paterno, and other university leaders, essentially ignored this criminal behavior — offers another reminder of how poorly we treat our most-vulnerable children. And our moral obligation to do better by these kids in every way.

If even if a 10th of the allegations are true (and the more-skeptical among us suspects what we don’t know is even worse), there is nothing in this scandal that shouldn’t disgust any man or woman. The fact that Sandusky has likely took advantage of his prime positions as a legendary college football assistant coach and upstanding member of the community to behave in a predatory, abusive, pedophilic manner. The apparently craven unwillingness of Paterno, former athletic director Tim Curley, former vice president Gary Schultz, and now-ousted university president Graham Spanier to report at least one allegation of molestation to the State College police or Centre County sheriff’s office nine years ago, which could have prevented more abuse. The possible complicity of the Second Mile, the organization which Sandusky had founded, in allowing him to continue his allegedly predatory behavior. The evidence that one high school where Sandusky was a volunteer allowed him to meet alone, unsupervised, with Second Mile participants attending classes there, even when some found his behavior to be :controlling” and “needy”. The mishandling of the entire revelations by Penn State until just hours ago, when the university’s board sacked Paterno and Spanier for what can be at best be called conduct unbecoming of leaders of men. And the continued willingness of some Penn State students and alum to defend what can only be kindly called the indefensible.

Sandusky is, of course, innocent until proven guilty. And innocent men have been wrongly accused, even convicted, of crimes. All that said, there are numerous lessons that come from this scandal. That loyalty is more immediate and valuable to many people than morality. That institutional and personal power, kept unchecked, corrupts absolutely. That when organizations fire bad actors, they do so for business reasons and not for the good of society. And that those who we consider to be “good” people are far too willing to let evil take hold wherever it chooses to go.

But the most-important lesson from the Penn State scandal is one that Dropout Nation readers know all too well: We treat our poorest, most-vulnerable children as if they are unworthy of our love and compassion.

Our juvenile justice systems subject far too many kids to abuse and denial of due process. Back in March, former Luzerne County (Pa.) Court of Common Pleas judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted last month on racketeering and bribery charges connected to the convictions of more than 2,500 juvenile offenders. For seven years, Ciavarella and his partner in crime, former presiding judge Michael Conahan, helped funnel $1.3 million a year in taxpayer dollars to cronies operating two private jails by tossing alleged youth offenders — many of whom were first-time offenders charged with misdemeanors such as spraying graffiti, writing prank notes, and truancy — into those jails. In exchange for condemning the lives of these kids — often by handing down guilty verdicts less than two minutes and essentially denying the kids the right to lawyers to boot– the judges collected $2.6 million in what can only be called filthy lucre.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that one out of every three kids held in 13 juvenile jails and prisons were sexually abused by guards, other employees, or fellow inmates. This included 37 percent of kids imprisoned at Maryland’s Backbone Mountain Youth Center, and Indiana’s Pendleton juvenile prison. Nationally, 12 percent of all juvenile prisoners reported molestation and other forms of sexual abuse.

Five years ago in Indianapolis, the city’s juvenile court system was rocked by scandal after allegations surfaced that nine employees at the juvenile jail were sexually abusing youth offenders. The news came after revelations of rampant overcrowding. Prosecutors couldn’t sustain those charges in court. But your editor would reveal that alleged juvenile offenders were often denied attorneys and, in some cases, were being falsely convicted of crimes. For example, one 16-year-old was convicted by one juvenile court magistrate for allegedly molesting her three year-old son and photographing the action; the conviction was overturned after appellate judges found that the photo used to justify the conviction actually showed the young woman kissing her child’s belly. Another 16-year-old was held in juvenile jail for 70 days — 69 days longer than allowed under Indiana state law — without so much as a trial.

America public education aids and abets the abuse with zero-tolerance policies and the overuse of harsh school discipline. Truancy accounted for 38 percent of all status (or illegal only because the child is a minor) cases filed in juvenile court in 2007; they accounted for just 30 percent of all status cases twelve years earlier (schools account for three-quarters of those referrals). In fact, the number of status cases has increased by 31 percent between 1995 and 2007, with courts hearing 35,300 more cases in 2007 than twelve years ago.

Our child welfare and foster care systems are no more humane. Each year, 26,000 kids age out of foster care, often never having either returned to their families or placed into a permanent home where they can get love and care. Even before they leave the system, they have been subject to abuse and neglect by the parents who are supposed to love them, by institutions that are supposed to protect them, and public education systems that subject them to the worst they can offer.

As National Public Radio revealed last month in its system on the negative impact of foster care systems, American Indiana kids in South Dakota made up 53 percent of all foster care wards, even though they make up just 13 percent of the state’s children. All but 10 percent of them were placed in foster homes that were run by non-natives, violating federal law originally passed to stop decades of abuse against Indian kids in what were euphemistically called non-reservation boarding schools. The apparent crony capitalism — this, in the form of Children’s Home Society, which reportedly collected more than $50 million in mostly no-bid contracts over seven years from South Dakota’s child welfare system (and was once-run by the state’s current governor, Dennis Daugaard) — makes one wonder how many Native American children were taken from their families in order to generate income. Given that the federal government found 31 other states in violation of federal law six years ago — and disproportionate rates of American Indian kids being seized from families — the problem is more-widespread than anyone realizes.

American public education exacerbates the problem. Just 20 percent of 13-year-old foster care kids attending Chicago’s public schools in 1998 graduated on time five years later, according to a 2004 study by Chapin Hall, lower than the 52 percent five-year graduation rate for all Chicago students based on eighth grade enrollment used by Dropout Nation. These kids are more-likely to be diagnosed as special ed cases: Twenty-six percent of the foster kids attending school in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2005-2006 were labeled as special ed cases, double the already abysmal 11 percent rate for all L.A. Unified students and 13 percent of all children nationwide that year. In Chicago, 45 percent of sixth-to-eighth grade students in foster care were diagnosed with learning disabilities, three times the rate of the overall student population. Kids in foster care are also more-likely to be subjected to the harshest school discipline, especially when they have also been labeled  learning disabled. In L.A. Unified, the out-of-school suspension rate for foster care students is 12 percent, higher than the eight percent for all students. The fact that foster kids don’t have families who can fight for improving their education means that they often get the worst American public education offers.

The simple reality is that the Penn State scandal, as isolated as it may seem, is just another example of the clear, constant debasement of kids who deserve much better. From dropout factories that toss 1.2 million kids into poverty and prison, to juvenile justice systems that are anything but, the systems we put in place to serve our children are unworthy of them. Some will argue that this scandal has nothing to do with the reform of American public education. That is short-sighted thinking. Our schools are the clearest representation of what we stand for as Americans and as moral human beings. More importantly, it intersects (and in many cases, sustains the troubles) of many of the systems that we have put in place for helping our kids when life hits them with its worst.

Government-run systems, in general, are terrible at dealing with the social ills that can only be solved by strong families and civic society. But we can make sure that those systems don’t make the lives of our kids any harder than they need to be. Reforming all of these systems, including our schools, is the least we owe to all of our children. And every school reformer and education traditionalist should be dedicated to that most important moral goal.

If all of us, especially those who believe in the Creator, want to consider ourselves moral people, then we need to do better by every child, no matter who they are or where they live.

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21

The percentage of young male high school dropouts age 16-to-19 who were unemployed in 2010, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

48

The percentage of young male dropouts age 16-to-19 who were not in the labor force in 2010, or more than the 31 percent of young male dropouts who have dropped out have any form of employment.

35

The percentage of high school dropouts not in the labor force as of October 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Add in the number of dropouts who are unemployed and half of high school dropouts are either not seeking or unable to find work.

20

Percentage of white dropouts, age 16-to-24 who were unemployed in October 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s double the 11 percent unemployment rate for counterparts who have at least some form of higher education, and 8 percent unemployment rate for baccalaureate recipients. Thirty-three of white dropouts are out of the workforce.

35

Percentage of young black dropouts age 16-to-24 who are unemployed in October 2011. That’s more than the 23 percent unemployment rate for counterparts with some college experience, and the 20 percent unemployment rate for four-year collegians. Forty-two percent of black dropouts are not in the labor force.

30

The percentage of young Asian dropouts age 16-to-24 who were unemployed in October 2011. A mere 7 percent of young Asian adults with some college experience, and 11 percent of four-year collegians, were unemployed.

17

The percentage of Latino dropouts age 16-to-24 who were unemployed in October 2011. The unemployment rate for Latino adults with some college experience is just 13 percent, and while the unemployment rate for four-year collegians is currently 20 percent, more of them will find jobs during the economic recovery.

What does the future look like for the 1.2 million sixth-graders who are likely functionally illiterate and will likely drop out in the next six years? Just consider the present of today’s dropouts. With half of them either not seeking work or unable to find jobs, these young men and women will struggle with economic poverty and be unable to experience the kind of social mobility that Americans have come to expect. And for those of us who are well-educated, earning an income and able to pay taxes, the costs are immense — from paying $594 billion into a traditional public education system that is fostering achievement gaps, to the welfare statements needed to help these young people.

As this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast points out, achievement gaps aren’t limited to just a smattering of poor black and Latino children, but to a wide number of kids from impoverished and affluent backgrounds. We cannot afford to not overhaul American public education.

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On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, a Webinar I conducted for Students For Education Reform leads me to offer some important reasons why now, more than ever, we must focus on stemming achievement gaps. Contrary to what some may think, we must  address the gaps of literacy, opportunity, teacher quality, and practices that has condemned 1.2 million sixth graders alone (and, according to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, millions more) to the educational, economic, and social abyss.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, Zune, MP3 player, smartphone, Nook Color or Kindle.  Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also download to your phone with BlackBerry podcast software and Google Reader.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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