STEM

“Dropout Factories”

Eduflack High School, higher ed, Marketing, NAEP, NCLB, STEM

From most media coverage over the past few years, we like to think of our high schools as incubators for success.  We throw around terms like rigor and relevance.  We opine that every child should go onto to college.  We push efforts to add additional AP or IB or dual enrollment programs to our schools.  And then, researchers such as those at Johns Hopkins throw a big wake-up call at our feet, reminding us of how far we still need to go.

If you missed it, Nancy Zuckerbrod at AP has the story.  http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/10/30/1_in_10_schools_are_dropout_factories?mode=PF  The summary: one in 10 high schools in the United States post a graduation rate of 60 percent or less.  That’s 17 percent of all of the high schools in the United States.

For years, these school districts have underestimated the problem.  The folks at Manhattan Institute would tell us an urban school district’s graduation rate was 55 percent.  The district would self-report 87 percent.  And we’d believe the latter.  We all want to believe statistics, and given the choice want to believe those that make us feel better about ourselves.  And there is no feel-good message in half of our students failing to earn a high school diploma.

We’d like to believe this is a problem in our urban areas.  But it isn’t limited to those communities.  These factories are just as likely in rural communities.  Why?  It’s purely economics.  We’re far more likely to find these schools in poor communities.  Dropout factories may be colorblind, but they know per-capita income.  According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, Florida and South Carolina have the greatest percentage of these schools.

Those communities providing refuge to such schools have been all abuzz about their dropout factories over the past few days.  We’re quick to defend, to refute, and to deny.  Such response is natural in crisis communications, and losing nearly half your students before graduation is indeed a crisis.  But if there were ever a time calling out for vision and for strategy, it has to be now.

In her piece, Zuckerbrod points to a number of legislative proposals to help fix the problem.  A common graduation rate formula is essential, as is stronger data collection and effective disaggregation of that data.  Then what?

We need to ask WHY these students are dropping out.  Despite popular opinion, few students leave high school because it is too hard.  To the contrary, many will leave because it is too boring or irrelevant.  

Are they leaving to go to work?  If so, what “good” job is out there for a 16-year-old high school dropout?  Some say they are dropping out because of NCLB or testing.  But I’d opine that most high school students don’t even know what NCLB is.

If we can gather data on why students leave school, we can craft the messages to get them to stay in school.  Even without the data, we know that the message must be personalized, must be relevant, and must just be common sense.  What does Eduflack mean?

* We need to start early.  Focusing on high schools and careers in ninth or 10th grade is just too late.  We need to get our kids on the right paths in middle school, get them thinking about the future, and show them the opportunities that really exist.  Middle school is the time to dream … and to plan.
* We need to better link high school to career.  Why take Algebra II?  If you want to design video games or work in a hospital, you need it.  High school courses are relevant.
* We need to take an interest.  In talking with today’s high school students about dropping out, most are staying in school because their teachers know them and take an interest in their lives.  We get rid of the factory mentality when we treat students as individuals.
* Every child has opportunity.  Education is the great equalizer.  With it, any student — regardless of socioeconomic level — can succeed.  But they need that high school diploma (and likely college degree) to do so.
* We cannot accept mediocrity.  We should be appalled by with the dropout rates reported by Manhattan Institute and others.  We simply cannot afford to lose a third of our students before the end of high school (and then another sizable group between high school and college completion).

I know, I know, I’m up on my high horse again.  But sometimes, we just have to ride that stag.  Dropout factories are simply unacceptable.  Dropping out of high school is never a viable choice.  If we want to build a new, strong economy based on high skill jobs, these are just the sort of factories that need a visit from the wrecking ball.  We need schools that prepare us for the rigors, challenges and opportunities of the future, not those that keep us from participating in that future.
  

Looking for Ed Improvement in the Montana Sky

Eduflack NCLB, STEM, Teacher Education

In focusing on an issue like education reform, Eduflack never expected that he would be writing multiple entries about the great state of Montana.  In March, we talked about how pre-K advocates in the state understood effective communication and effective advocacy.  Now, we focus on Montana Sen. Max Baucus, and his effort to solve multiple education ails with his proposed Education Competitiveness Act.


The Billings Gazette has the full story — http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/08/20/news/state/24-tuition.txt.  The highlights are simple.  A big focus is making sure that kids are ready to learn when they start kindergarten.  But the more interesting focus is his commitment to provide full scholarships to any high school student looking to major in science, technology, engineering, or math.  The catch — those students would have to teach for four years after college graduation. 

Why is this so interesting?  Simply, it sends several powerful messages:
* It cements STEM education as a national priority.
* It places recruiting qualified teachers for hard-to-staff courses like math and science on the national education priority list.
* It makes clear that teaching STEM is just as important as learning it.  Being a STEM teacher is just as important as being a rocket scientist or a cancer curer.

What is also does is focus on solutions.  The Education Competitiveness Act is not about casting blame for the lack of teachers in rural communities or to bemoan the loss of U.S. jobs to competitor countries overseas.  It recognizes that economic success begins with educational success.  And educational success begins with the teacher.

Of course, this proposal is simply the latest to be thrown on top of the pile of education reforms, NCLB realignments, and other such legislation that Congress is using to keep the front doors propped up.  Soon, it may just be time to take a look at these proposals, take a look at the current laws, and actually craft a meaningful national K-12 education law focused on evidence-based instruction, improved student performance, and effective teaching.  An eduflack can dream, can’t he?

Reform is More Than a Four-Letter Word

Eduflack AP, higher ed, NCLB, PR, SBRR, STEM

OK, I’ll go first.  My name is Eduflack, and I’m an NCLB-aholic.  That was never my intention.  It just seems that every time I look for information on education reform and how we can improve the schools, I’m sucked in by the flashing lights and attractive packaging of NCLB stories.  Even when I try to get away from it, someone is offering me a taste of NCLB.  Some HQT here, some accountability there, and a whole lot of SBRR just about everywhere.  I admit it, I’m hooked.  And I like it.

And as much as I am an unapologetic supporter of the law and its goals, I also realize there is far more to education reform than NCLB.  Some of those topics — like high school reform and STEM — are already being discussed as additions to NCLB 2.0.  But there has to be more to school improvement than our federal elementary and secondary education act.

Leave it to Checker Finn and Diane Ravitch to remind us of what else is out there.  In a Wall Street Journal commentary yesterday (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118653759532491305.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries), the two focus on their desire to protect liberal arts education in the K-12 curriculum.  Their goal: to ensure we continue to teach history, civics, literature, and such subjects alongside our math and science requirements.

During a time when we are so focused on our “world is flat” economy and competition with India, China, and other nations around the globe, Ravitch and Finn’s piece makes one take pause.  They argue that to truly be competitive, students not only need technical skills, but they need to understand people, need to be thoughtful, and need to be equipped to question authority and ask, “why?” 

Ultimately, they raise the issue of whether it needs to be all or nothing.  Successful schools can focus on STEM and core subject assessments.  But they can also teach the Great Books and Western Civ.

For two individuals who are best known for their research, they deserve credit for personalizing their cause.  Citing the “academic” paths that made Steve Jobs, Alan Greenspan, and Warren Buffett successes helps most doubters see that it is not the academic major on the diploma, but what one does with their knowledge that really matters.  And their turn of the phrase, calling for “leaves and flowers” to be added to STEM, definitely leaves it mark. 

The great rhetorical challenge now is how one keeps focus on the NCLB building blocks necessary to provide the path to high-quality liberal arts education.  Or more simply, how do you say we are spending too much time and money and effort on NCLB, when the reading skills NCLB provides under Reading First are essential to any student understanding Shakespeare or the great philosophers? 

Regardless, with their think piece, Finn and Ravitch have definitely thrown the opening pitch in what could be a very interesting ed reform ballgame.  If they can continue to talk about it, outside of the context of NCLB, it could also be one that fills the stands.