Every 26 seconds, one of America's children drops out of school. On the November 30 PBS NewsHour, John Bridegland, CEO of Civic Enterprises discussed his organization's assessment of the problem with Margaret Warner. Warner began by announcing the good news that "the national graduation rate hit 75 percent in 2008, up from 72 percent in 2001. And the number of so-called dropout factories, high schools where fewer than 60 percent of freshmen graduate four years later, declined to 1,750 in 2008, down from some 2,000 in 2002."
According to Bridgeland, the delisted dropout schools achieved "Adequate Yearly Progress," AYP in the lingo of No Child Left Behind. Yes, it's still in effect. And we know how teachers have been complaining that NCLB has forced them to focus on teaching to the test. So does boosting the graduation rate mean that our children are better educated? A statistic that Mr. Bridgeland left out is that 50 percent of those who do graduate are not prepared for life, careers, or further schooling. Or was I being too cynical about his focus on statistics?
I checked out the Civic Enterprises website and came upon the "Civic Marshall Plan for Building a Grad Nation." A Marshall Plan? A Grad Nation? Are we talking about rebuilding Dresden following the fire bombing or learning to read on Sesame Street? It's difficult to tell as the plan sets goals to enlist community support to "combat absenteeism" and achieve "percentage point increases" in something called "promoting power," which I understand to be the power to raise graduation rates.
I can't even imagine how much money went in to the study and plan presented by Civic Enterprise. Yet, nothing in the effort addresses the quality of American education, other than to say we need to raise standards and expectations. The report does mention that 38 states have adopted the Common Core Standards. The stated goal of these standards is to prepare children to compete in the global economy. But where are the living-wage jobs in America?
Statistical analysis will not improve education. Neither will all the community support in the world. Better schools will come from more creative teaching and effective curriculum—two qualities subverted by the obsession with AYP. Moreover, there is nothing in the Civic Marshall Plan that hasn't been tried—and failed to reverse the deterioration of our education system.
The tragic reality is that our children are falling through the cracks between America's military and economic superpower status (See my history of education reform at The Gulliver Initiative). The problems in our schools reflect the way We the People have allowed politicians and corporations to shape the nation's value system. Blogs to come will explore this mindset and antidotes to it in more detail.
Meanwhile, send us examples of how your school takes the spirit of the child out of learning.
1 comment:
This morning I met with my school's math coach about the progress...very slow progress of my 15:1 slef-contained 5th grade class. We should be on Ch. 4...we are on Ch. 2. We should be doing Algebra. I pleaded the nature of my class...modified curriculum and that we need more time as indicated by their IEPs. She nicely told me, "You've got to move on." "But they still can't regroup when subtracting." "You've got to move on." Pause...she must have been reading my pause, "I know it sucks but you have to move on. You've got to expose them to what will be on the test and hope they grasp some of it." I've got to get back to high school! It's not much better there but helping the students graduate and navigate their way out of the system sits much better on my conscience than simply moving on.
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