As the Industrial Age recedes farther into America’s past and the Information Age becomes our universal experience, municipalities are understandably concerned with lowering the high school dropout rate.  There are fewer jobs for dropouts than in the past, and communities are worried about what it takes to prepare their youth for the future.  They are also worried about their own progressive images, but let’s not be so cynical as to focus on that side of things… let’s focus on the genuine concern that the system is failing; that large numbers of students are dropping out and forming a population of criminals or, at best, helpless government wards living on the dole.

For years now, the news has been out that many city schools in particular have a graduation rate around 50%… unless you actually read the articles closely enough to see that they are talking about “on-time” graduation rates.  This method counts a student who repeats a grade and eventually graduates as the same as a dropout.  These headlines are misleading, alarmist, and detrimental to urbanites who are trying to take pride in their communities.  They are also extremely unfair to those urban students, parents, and educators who work their asses off in order to keep kids from dropping out.  For a more honest look at the numbers, consider the Economic Policy Institute’s publication, Rethinking high school graduation rates and trends, which skewers the methods used in most reports on graduation rates.  For example:

…this study examines a wide array of measurement issues including: the extent of bias in household surveys from a limited sample (excluding the military, prison, and other institutional populations); the growth of high school completion by equivalency exams; and the bias arising from the inclusion of recent immigrants (most of whom were never enrolled in U.S. schools) in some measures.

The study shows that actual high school graduation rates have consistently gone up and continue to do so.  Yes, the overall has been on a bit of a plateau over the last decade or so, but progress is still clear.  The overall rate is currently between 80% and 83%, not including GEDs (which obviously send the rate up even higher).  Racial gaps still exist, but they are closing.

In other words, the dropout rate is lower than ever, and it is continuing to fall.  The “dropout crisis” just doesn’t show up when the numbers are examined.  Alarmists will kindly move to another topic.

Still, it may be worthwhile to continue to work to bring the dropout rate ever closer to 0.0%.  After all, what dropout rate would we consider “acceptable”?  In New Jersey, even 2% has been declared not low enough… but at that point, it’s about keeping teen criminals off the streets.  While that may be a worthwhile goal, there are probably better resources for at-risk teens than the local public high school.   There is some percentage of people for whom it is inappropriate to remain in a regular school, or even any school.  The goal should not be to make the dropout rate 0.0%.  The goal should be to provide an opportunity for every student, and to ensure that those students who contemplate leaving school have a full understanding of their options, and of the true value of a high school education.  Every time a student asks “why do we have to learn this?”, it is an indication that the teacher, the school, the parents, and society as a whole have failed to communicate something important to the student.  It’s also an indication that the student is trying to understand something about what’s going on.  It’s a much better question than most people realize, and it shouldn’t be shrugged off.

As a teacher, I don’t worry as much about the graduation rate as I do about what my students are actually going to do when they leave school.  Whether they graduate or not, some young people have a decent plan, and I support those individuals and wish them the best.  But overall, few dropouts leave school for a career that has any kind of decent wage prospects or upward mobility.  That is the real concern.  When a teen feels that school is not working for them, the odds are that dropping out won’t actually be their best option.  But when they feel that hopeless, what can we do to convince them?

Some communities are experimenting with paying students to stay in school.  I think that will prove to be ineffective and obviously ripe for corruption and abuse.  But it does highlight a very important issue: Motivation.  Students who lack the motivation are not necessarily lazy.  They simply don’t yet know the value of education.  Even with dropout rates at historic lows — possibly because of that — even those students who stay in school and graduate and go on to college are generally unaware of the value of their education.  Few people recognize the value of education until they find themselves in need of some that they don’t have.  It’s pointless to bluster that you have to learn it because we said so, and it’s pointless to engage in a blame game with your political opponents about what is taught in schools, and whether standards are high enough.

In order to truly educate more students, and in order to educate them better, we need students to want to be educated.  This will not occur by government fiat, but by social values and norms.  Unfortunately, it will require our society to value education more than dogma, which will be difficult.  Parents would have to be prepared for their children to disagree with them.  Teachers would have to encourage their students to surpass them.  And political groups would have to understand that we aren’t going to swallow their lies about how bad things (like graduation rates) are, nor fall into line with their proposed solutions just because they proclaim that it’s “for the children.”

But that’s a start.

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