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are a great loss to society
The state Department of Public Instruction has come clean and essentially said yesterday that its previously announced rosy drop out rates were a sham.
Earlier this year, DPI said the state drop out rate was only 20 percent, when it fact it’s close to one in three students who don’t finish high school. In Columbus County, the rate is closer to 40 percent.
What’s worse, the state’s new plan to cut vocational training and make most high school students take courses like biology, literature and physics is certain to doom more kids to failure and hasten the drop out rate. Putting students who are having trouble with basic skills and thrusting them into this new pre-college curriculum is like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Shakespeare isn’t going to get many of these kids a job.
Some officials suggest that one way to lower the drop out rate is to raise the mandatory school attendance age from 16 to 18. While this might make the numbers look better, it is folly without additional support for at-risk students.
The simple fact is that once many students reach age 16, their needs either aren’t being met by their schools so they drop out, or, they’ve been so hopelessly corrupted by their sad lives at home or from the education they get on the streets, it’s a blessing to other students that they do leave school.
If DPI really wants to help these students stay in school, they should increase the level of individual attention. Ideas like freshmen academies that ease students into high school life work, but, students who are likely to drop out need individual attention and a customized curriculum to get them through school with a diploma in hand.
Though alternative schools often get an undeserved bad name, they very often get it right by identifying what a student excels at or enjoys and tailor resources and counseling to help them succeed.
What’s needed from DPI, the governor and legislators is a firm resolve to give school systems the funding – and the latitude to develop plans at the local level – to keep students from dropping out.
If the schools lose them at 16, these young citizens are often lost to society forever.