Drop Out!!

Did you know that a third of the kids that enter high school today fail to walk across the stage on graduation day? I found this hard to believe, because when I was in high school in the early nineties dropping out of high school was something that was almost unheard of in those times. However, I did consider dropping out when I was in the eleventh grade to help support my mom, who was a single parent raising four kids, but that thought quickly faded from my mind. In my time it was always instilled in me if you didn’t receive a high school diploma there was no way you could land a decent job yet earn a decent salary. In such a short time things have really changed. Statistics show across the country children of all races and gender are dropping out, but Blacks and Hispanics are dropping out at an alarming rate over Whites and Asians.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a sixteen year old kid who stated that he drop out a few weeks ago, because he just doesn’t like going to school. If he was related to me I probably would have suckered punch him for dropping out for such a dumb reason. He went on to say that “I’m from DC and the school I was attending wasn’t teaching me anything anyway that‘s why I stopped going”. Where are we going wrong as a society, if we allow a sixteen year old child to drop out of school simply because he or she doesn’t like school? Do we stand by and let them throw their entire future away? “A report, issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that only about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation's largest cities receive diplomas”(cbsnew.com para 2). There has to be more research done, more questions answered, and major changes conducted to change this trend.

I also talked to a twenty six year old that stated “he drop out at the age of sixteen, because he was extremely bored with school”. It was so boring to him that he would go only twice a week and when he did attend he would just go to sleep in class. He failed so far behind on his assignments he just decided it was in his best interest not to go back, because he wasn’t able and willing to catch up the work. He now looks back on his decision to drop out and has realized that it was the worst decision he has ever made in his life. As a young teenager he had always wanted to be an accountant, that horrible decision has only landed him jobs in construction and in the restaurant business. He recently went back to school to receive his GED and will attend college in the spring; however, he is was still visibly upset for wasting so many years of obtaining the occupation he wanted to be at a younger age.
We as parents and educators have to change the mindset of these children at a very young age. We can’t wait until their teenagers to tell them the importance of a high school education. It has to start practically before they start their first day of school in other words it should be stressed diligently by the parents at home. However, it is also the early childhood teacher’s responsibility to be able to recognize if there is a child that need a little more attention in this aspect—and that teacher should assist in fixing the problem before the child gets the desire to quit or before the child gets bored. These are the things that were instilled in me at a young age and I believe it was one of the reasons why I didn’t drop out when the desire was there.
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I really like the Child Trend Data Bank web site it has a lot of good information. It's a great page because it breaks down the drop out rate everyway imaginable. A blog that I think will be a good source to use when completing my analysis paper is D-Ed Reconing. His site has identified several hyper links with valuable information.