Posted on 10/24/2008 5:53:04 AM PDT by meandog
WASHINGTON -- Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group.
More than half the states have graduation goals that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday.
And dropout rates haven't budged: One in four kids is dropping out of high school.
"The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and poor children. "And that is going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to compete," she said.
In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma, the report said.
High schools are required to meet graduation targets every year as part of the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.
But those targets are set by states, not by the federal government. And most states allow schools to graduate low percentages of students by saying that any progress, or even the status quo in some cases, is acceptable.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnbc.com ...
Homeschool ping
What they mean is that the dropout rate today is higher than it was when the parents of current highschoolers were in high school, on average. This is hardly evenly distributed across the population, but we’re not allowed to mention that.
You can’t “hold schools accountable” for what the KIDS are doing. Those kids are not dropping out because school is any more tedious than it ever was. They’re dropping out because they’ve found that they can already get whatever they want without working for it, so why should they finish school?
Hold schools accountable? When, and how, can we hold parents accountable.
Pathetic, when you consider today’s high school diploma is the equivalent of an eighth grade education 25 years ago.
“...hardly evenly distributed across the population.”
I think you win the cigar, Tax-chick!
That’s more like parent.
Don’t worry kids! President Obama will take care of you.
What they don't say is how many enroll in distance learning or get their GED. I doubt there are any stats on that.
They also don't have the stats on how many free-thinking, conservative and Christian students get expelled because of zero tolerance and not wanting to go along with the groupthink.
It looks like bad news on the surface, but they're not reporting the true story. Government education is a failure and these kids (and their parents) know it.
It just prepares them for a life of reliance on the welfare state. I bet they don’t have a problem getting out of bed to go buy drugs, knock up a couple of the neighborhood teenagers or vote for Obama.
Well, your schools may be failing, but at least they’re not lying about it like ours are. We dont teach the kids either, but they still get record marks and passes every year because we make the exams easier.
I was talking to a University Professor here in the UK a few months back and he stated unequivocally that the current British generation will be the first in 1500 years to know less than parents do. Putting on my devils advocate hat, I made one of the usual liberal answers, namely that the emphasis now is not on knowing facts (after all you can always look them up) but on knowing how to find out facts. His reply to that was “well, it isn’t working then”.
Pluses and minuses...
Plus side
Homeschooling--means less out-of-wedlock pregnancy, drug usage, and (depending on the homeschooler and curriculum) better grades and education.
Minus side
No H.S. sports, proms, clubs, social interaction with "real world and situations" and, (in some cases) access to some really good and dedicated teachers.
Actually, if you look a little deeper, you'll see the decline started with the creation of the Department of (re)Education in 1978, thank you Jimmuh Carter, a Democrat controlled Congress and the NEA....
This is statistical manipulation
More graduated twenty and thirty years ago becasue there were less illegals and less of an underclass twenty to thirty years ago.
I cheated - this piece was posted yesterday and the demographics analyzed in some detail. I don’t think I posted on that thread, but I read the discussion.
The bitter fruits of four decades of neoliberal socialistic experimentation are dropping off the trees and rotting around us.
.
I would suggest it has less to do with acts of Congress than it does with acts of politicizing the public school system. More people will stay in public school when there is an agreed upon value system. When you have to parrot Dim talking points to even stay out of trouble no less pass.
Homeschoolers go to college if they want that experience...usually conservative ones.
I just call that “Job Security”. (For my kids.)
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