Tag: Dropout Factories

A Holy Call for School Reform

Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. And in his…

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!

John Sullivan Dwight’s translation of the third verse of Placide Cappeau’s and Adolphe Adam’s O Holy Night. As reformers, we must embrace these words by helping children and their families break the chains of illiteracy and innumeracy, as well as end the oppression of educational failure.

On this Christmas Eve, let’s commit ourselves once again to building brighter futures for all our children.

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The Dropout Nation Podcast: Take It and Shake It


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On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I discuss how we should look at American public education as an Etch-A-Sketch and shake up the status quo. More than ever, we must…

Dropout Nation Podcast Cover

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I discuss how we should look at American public education as an Etch-A-Sketch and shake up the status quo. More than ever, we must take the opportunities to overhaul a system that fails at least 150 kids every hour (and millions more every year).

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

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Voices of the Dropout Nation: Elinor Bowles on Black America’s Choice in Civil Rights and School Reform


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If education is truly the civil rights issue of this time, then African-Americans — whose children are often failed the most by American public education — must be more-engaged in…

Do we need a Stokely Carmichael for school reform? It may help to have an MLK first.

If education is truly the civil rights issue of this time, then African-Americans — whose children are often failed the most by American public education — must be more-engaged in education decision-making than they are now. Even with artists such as John Legend and organizations such as UNCF and 100 Black Men joining hands with the school reform movement, far too many old-school civil rights organizations (especially the NAACP — which will unveil a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded agenda in January that includes a focus on desegregation) maintain alliances with defenders of the status quo that perpetuate the harmful effects of poor instruction, lousy curricula and abysmal standards and practices. The Grad Nation report released earlier this week by America’s Promise, instead of being good news, makes the reality as clear as ever.

Elinor Bowles offers her thoughts in this Voices of the Dropout Nation on what Black America must do to truly achieve the goal of equal opportunity in education sought out by an earlier generation of civil rights activists. Consider her perspective and think about what you think should be done.

Whatever one thinks of Waiting for Superman or its point of view, the movie has made the failure of public education part of the national conversation–a much needed development. American public education has failed to effectively address the needs of its students or the nation. Despite the reality, known since the mid-1980s, that the nation’s schools are grossly inadequate, there has been a deafening silence about their dismal failure, particularly in relation to the needs of students of African-American descent.

The murder rate goes up, the graduation rate goes down and our youth increasingly end up in the wrong institution . Regrettably, African-American adults and community leaders have been seemingly preoccupied with other problems. It seems to take all the energy most parents can mobilize to take care of the needs of their own children. Scattered group efforts at educational improvement have led to extremely few sustained attempts at change, with varying degrees of success. Education is, after all, a complicated and time-consuming affair.

The discussion generated by Waiting for Superman has been promoted and highlighted by Oprah Winfrey, MSNBC, numerous news and special TV programs, and an excellent article in the September 30, 2010, issue of The Root written by R. L’Heureux Lewis, an assistant professor of sociology and black studies at the City College of New York. His piece, “Waiting for School Reform,” provides an overview of the difficulties confronting efforts at educational improvement, including the enormous financial costs and the lack of comprehensive research. However, as noted in a comment by a reader, E. Cederwell, it only superficially touches on “the single most important element explaining the great disparities in any school’s ability to achieve educational success: the world outside the classroom, and in particular, the culture each young person is surrounded by.” Cederwell states that “the perceived value of learning and education . . . is hugely important. . . . Communities need to be ready to take a . . . searching examination, and, where indicated, be willing to commit to adopt certain values. This may be hardest of all.”

Query: What is the general culture and attitude within the African-American community toward the education of its youth, particularly those who are poor and often in great need of love and guidance as well as material things? In using the word “community,” we are not talking about a geographical space, but a cultural configuration of persons who have a shared history, values, and life circumstances. This focus elicits a multitude of complications, given the current lack of cohesion in the African-American “community,” which many believe is becoming irreparably splintered along economic lines.

The discussion generated by Waiting for Superman has focused on the funding of education and the roles of politicians, administrators, principals, parents, and especially teachers and unions. However, it has failed to seriously address the difficult, dominant, and ubiquitous role of the African-American community in school reform. What can African-Americans and their institutions do to send the message to our young people that education is important, that it is cool, that it is vital to the good life, that it is a requirement for an interesting and safe environment, that it can be exciting, and that it makes you a better, more desirable individual, mate and parent? How can we create an environment that convinces our young people that education has more rewards than merely hanging out and, for most people, more concrete rewards than athletics and music and selling drugs?

How can we make education a dominant, outstanding value in the African-American community like it was in the early 20th century? Those of us who were born in the early or mid-20th century remember the dictum that “you’ve got to be twice as good.” And we all know the important role of the family in forming character and promoting educational values. But as African Americans we also know that many of our families today have been so damaged by a variety of forces that they do not have the will or the resources to be what we are saying they must be in terms of an educational support system for their children. And while we must do everything possible to help them overcome their liabilities, if their children are to be rescued we must also do everything within our power as a community to compensate for what parents lack.

Despite the seeming lack of involvement of the black community in the education of its youth, many individuals and groups actually are addressing this question. Individuals and organizations are providing scholarships, from the Ron Brown Scholar Program, which contributes close to $800,000 in scholarships annually, to people who contribute a couple of scholarships of $500 a semester to youth in their church. People are becoming mentors and big sisters and big brothers. They act as tutors for specific subjects. Professionals and business people visit schools and lecture about the work they do and how students can prepare themselves for various careers. Others invite students to visit or work in their offices during summer vacation. Churches provide space and material for after-school programs. It’s not that nothing is being done. It’s that we need much, much more and we need to do it more loudly and, in some instances, in a more organized way. We need to find more ways to publicly recognize and reward those children who work hard to achieve. We need everybody to know how important education is.

Perhaps we need a national organization to do for education what SNCC did for voting in the 1960s. Maybe we can call it something like Community Campaign for Educational Excellence. Perhaps we need to clearly explain what is meant when we say that “education is today what civil rights was in the 1960s.” We need to make it clear that we are talking about a similar urgency and significance and deterrent to equality, not about tactics like marches or content like legislation. The civil rights movement of the 1960s eliminated the state and local laws that restricted the movement and behavior of blacks. The educational movement of the 21st century must create educational institutions that serve the needs of all of the country’s children.

There are multiple ways the African-American community can change its culture in order to create an environment where education is recognized and honored. These ways are limited only by the imagination. There are, however, three basic requirements: First, we must care about all African-American children and have a burning need to save them from the lives of violence and crime and unemployment and meaninglessness that so many of them are living or facing. Second, we must truly believe that all children can be educated. And third, we must be willing to reach out and touch — to contribute our time, our energy, and our material resources, however limited they may be, to the salvation of our youth. African-American youth, given today’s dominant economic and social condition and trends, are in grave danger. What do we intend to do?

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Watch: A Sacramento High School Works to Overcome Achievement Gaps


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Seven years ago, Sacramento High School was considered a dropout factory before the term was actually coined. Although 85 percent of its students overall from its original Class of 2003…

Seven years ago, Sacramento High School was considered a dropout factory before the term was actually coined. Although 85 percent of its students overall from its original Class of 2003 were promoted from 9th to 12th grade, that number is deceiving: Just 49 percent of Sacto’s black and Latino freshmen earned enough credits to make to senior year, while only 68 percent of white freshmen made it to 12th grade. Such numbers more than explain why the Sacramento City Unified School District voted in 2003 to shut down the school (then the nation’s second-oldest high school west of the Mississippi), convert it into a charter and hand it over to St. Hope Public Schools, a charter school operator cofounded by now-Sacramento Mayor (and soon-to-be Mr. Michelle Rhee) Kevin Johnson.

These days, the school — now called Sacramento Charter High and one of four charter schools on campus — is no perfect graduation haven. Just 58 percent of Latino males and 50 percent of their black male counterparts graduated with the courses needed to get into a University of California or California State university (versus 75 percent and 69 percent, respectively, of their female colleagues); a mere 40 percent of its white male students graduated with US/Cal State-qualified courses (versus 75 percent of their female schoolmates). It must still overcome its abysmally low promoting power and graduation rates for Latino students overall. But the school has succeeded in improving graduation rates for its students. This includes a 93 percent promoting power rate for black freshmen in its Class of 2008. It deserves credit for making strides, even as it must do better.

Watch this video on Sacto’s efforts to improve the quality of education for minorities and the poorest of students — and consider how American public education can make the strides needed for all children.

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This is Dropout Nation: Nevada’s State of Denial


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When it comes to America’s high school dropout crisis — and the overall crisis of low educational achievement — there are generally two responses at the state and local levels….

It's all paradise-- except for Nevada students.

When it comes to America’s high school dropout crisis — and the overall crisis of low educational achievement — there are generally two responses at the state and local levels. The first is alarm and acknowledgment from those actively working to reform education. Those folks, no longer rare to be seen, are still in the (much-larger) minority. Those who usually run local school districts and state education agencies are generally unwilling to admit there are problems. They adapt the Officer Barbrady approach to the crisis, denying the statistics, attempting to polk holes in data, and generally behaving with little regard for the children in their care.

The latter typifies what is happening in Nevada, where the state schools superintendent and other defenders of traditional public education were none too pleased with the data from Education Week‘s Diplomas Count report, which proclaimed the state’s graduation rate for its Class of 2007 as the nation’s worst. State Superintendent Keith Rheault complained that the 42 percent graduation rate EdWeek estimates is far below the state’s own 67 percent calculation. He complains, in particular, that the magazine failed to account for student transfers to other states and the state’s own mobility.

This is rather laughable given that the Silver State is one of the nation’s fastest-growing states and has little in the way of out-migration. But even if one disagrees with how EdWeek calculates graduation rates, the reality is that by any measure, the kids aren’t graduating in Nevada and its largest county, Clark County (home to Las Vegas).

As you already know, Dropout Nation uses a simpler measure than that developed by EdWeek research czar (and dropout crisis researcher extraordinaire) Christopher Swanson. The measure compares eighth-grade enrollment against diploma recipients (or in the case of gender and racial measurements, progression to senior year of high school) five years later. Why eighth grade? Students are generally moved on from grade to grade, regardless of their level of academic achievement, until high school, when students must earn credits; this is when the dropout crisis manifests. Through this measure, one can simply (if not always perfectly) smooth out the ninth-grade bulge of freshmen left back from previous years because they because of the educational neglect wrought by schools, districts and teachers through the use of this social promotion.

Dropout Nation's Estimated Graduation Rate for Nevada's Class of 2007

Nevada's Class of 2007. One in two didn't make it.

Based on this calculation, a mere 56 percent of the 20,013 kids who originally made up the Silver State’s Class of 2007 graduated on time. That’s just 16,455 kids, if you are doing the math. What happened to the other 13,000 or so teens in the class? They likely dropped out.

No matter how Rheault tries to square it, Nevada is as likely to have a 67 percent graduation rate as I am likely to win the coming week’s Powerball drawing.

Graduation rates for Nevada’s school districts aren’t exactly overwhelming. Only 63 percent of Carson City’s Class of 2007 garnered their sheepskins, while just 56 percent of Washoe County’s (i.e. Reno and Sparks) freshmen made it to graduation. In tiny Mineral County, a mere 31 percent of the original Class of 2007 — 25 students — made it to graduation. Essentially, Nevada has a dropout crisis of stunning proportions, especially given it is a largely rural state with just one really large city.

That city, of course, is Las Vegas, which is part of Clark County schools, the largest school district in the state by a wide margin. About 9,070 of Clark County’s Class of 2007 likely dropped out; it accounts for about 70 percent of Nevada’s dropouts. It also presents us with one of the most-persistent elements of the dropout crisis in America: The boys aren’t graduating.

Clark County Promoting Power Whites in Class of 2007

No matter how you slice it...

The white males barely trail behind their female peers, with only a 1.3 percent gap in Promoting Power rates. This isn’t so for the black and Latino children. Just 66.5 percent of young black men made it from freshman to senior year of high school versus 75.5 percent of their young black women peers. And while while 75.2 percent of young Latino women made it from freshman to senior year on time, just 64.5 percent of young Latino men made it.

Clark County Promoting Power: Blacks in Class of 2007

...the song...

Clark County Promoting Power: Latinos in Class of 2007

...remains the same.

Considering that the the females have higher levels of promoting power, the heart of the dropout crisis lies with the boys. But this isn’t the only thing that matters. Considering that so many college freshmen end up in remedial ed, the girls may not necessarily be doing better. This is especially true in a giant dropout factory like Clark County. But solving the dropout crisis here, as in other states, will have to start with the boys (and with reading).

Unlike Nevada officials, Clark County’s leaders are acknowledging the problem. They are trying to address one of the symptoms of at-risk behavior among students — chronic truancy (even if some of the methods are among the tried-and-failed used elsewhere) — and looking to engage parents in this discussion (albeit, not perfectly). It is at least a start, and certainly better than what Rheault seems to be doing. He’s failing to fully acknowledge the state’s dropout crisis. He also seems to be ignoring the crisis to come; 43 percent of Nevada’s 4th-graders read Below Basic proficiency, according to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Either way, Rheault and other education officials in the Silver State needs to stop rationalizing matters and simply admit the problem. Then get to work.

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This Is Dropout Nation: A Chart of Educational Failure


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It speaks for itself.

It speaks for itself.

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