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President Obama surprised everyone when he called for all states to raise their high school dropout age to 18 in his State of the Union address last month.
“We also know that when students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma,” he said. “When students are not allowed to drop out, they do better.”
There’s little argument that a comprehensive education is necessary for every citizen that aspires to some level of success in contemporary America. While some of our grandparents may have managed to hold decent-paying positions with less than a high school degree, graduation from secondary school is an absolute minimum for any kind of job security today.
In this respect the president is right. We should make sure that all students stick around long enough to graduate, regardless of personal circumstances.
But his plan falls short on one crucial point: President Obama wrongly assumes that state law can solve a problem only educators can remedy.
American schools have operated on the assumption that a one-size-fits-all approach to secondary education is a cost-effective and productive way to teach the nation’s adolescents. Students are sent to high schools based on proximity to their homes. As long as they keep going for four years and take care of their homework, each student is awarded a diploma and sent on their merry way to college or the workforce.
This model is one that has been proven effective for a majority of students. About 75 percent of high school students graduate on time. The rest, 25 percent of all students, fall out of the system.
If a full quarter of the people participating in the secondary school system are failing to finish on time (if at all), the correct course of action is not to ask states to make sure that students are sitting in their seats, listening to apparently ineffective lessons.
Instead, new educational models need to be developed for those students poorly served by mainstream public schools.
This doesn’t mean that we have to discard the current public school system altogether. About 3 million students graduate from high school each year, so public schools clearly work for a lot of people.
But nearly a million more don’t graduate each year, a portion of the population that will collectively struggle to succeed financially in life. Those people deserve a school system designed specifically to help them make it to graduation. Those students, who may be pregnant, have learning difficulties, have to hold jobs to support their families or any other number of complicating issues that millions of students face, deserve a diploma, too.
President Obama surprised everyone when he called for all states to raise their high school dropout age to 18 in his State of the Union address last month.
“We also know that when students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma,” he said. “When students are not allowed to drop out, they do better.”
There’s little argument that a comprehensive education is necessary for every citizen that aspires to some level of success in contemporary America. While some of our grandparents may have managed to hold decent-paying positions with less than a high school degree, graduation from secondary school is an absolute minimum for any kind of job security today.
In this respect the president is right. We should make sure that all students stick around long enough to graduate, regardless of personal circumstances.
But his plan falls short on one crucial point: President Obama wrongly assumes that state law can solve a problem only educators can remedy.
American schools have operated on the assumption that a one-size-fits-all approach to secondary education is a cost-effective and productive way to teach the nation’s adolescents. Students are sent to high schools based on proximity to their homes. As long as they keep going for four years and take care of their homework, each student is awarded a diploma and sent on their merry way to college or the workforce.
This model is one that has been proven effective for a majority of students. About 75 percent of high school students graduate on time. The rest, 25 percent of all students, fall out of the system.
If a full quarter of the people participating in the secondary school system are failing to finish on time (if at all), the correct course of action is not to ask states to make sure that students are sitting in their seats, listening to apparently ineffective lessons.
Instead, new educational models need to be developed for those students poorly served by mainstream public schools.
This doesn’t mean that we have to discard the current public school system altogether. About 3 million students graduate from high school each year, so public schools clearly work for a lot of people.
But nearly a million more don’t graduate each year, a portion of the population that will collectively struggle to succeed financially in life. Those people deserve a school system designed specifically to help them make it to graduation. Those students, who may be pregnant, have learning difficulties, have to hold jobs to support their families or any other number of complicating issues that millions of students face, deserve a diploma, too.
McPherson has an alternative school program that works specifically toward that end. By developing a system that works solely to encourage graduation rates among students at risk of dropping out, the McPherson Alternate Center has lifted the city’s graduation rate to 92 percent.
That impressive rate has little to do with the statewide requirement that students stay in school until they turn 18. The average graduation rate in Kansas in 2009 was a meager 80 percent, above the national average but far below McPherson’s numbers. States like Iowa, which has the highest graduation rate in the area (86 percent in 2009) but a dropout age of 16 often outpace states with a dropout age of 18, like Colorado (78 percent).
The underlying argument of Obama’s charge is correct: Students should be in school until they have earned their degree. But sending the police after students who are not finding their place in our schools is not the correct way to reach this goal. By creating alternative centers across America like that in McPherson we can keep more kids in school while putting them all in a position to succeed after graduation.
— The McPherson Sentinel Editorial Board
