What are you going to do with your life? How are you
going to get there? Why? These are questions that are presented to teens of all
ages, backgrounds, socioeconomic status, and race are presented with all over
the country. But what are the answers to these questions? Do these answers
matter if our basic education is not being delivered? Due to the recent publicity of high school
drop out rates in American I came to ask myself why high school students drop out.
Many of the ninth graders will express their desire to attend a college, or
have a career; but why do they not succeed. There are many hypotheses' that
elaborate on this idea, and president Obama actually has a working goal to
solve this problem. Personally I think
motivation could be behind this idea. Motivation of the teachers, students and
their parents could be the reason,
In the article listed at the bottom of the page discusses
the problems faced in our country with not only drop out rates but also the
idea of students graduating when expected.
This article looks at the potential problems that could elicit this
behavior of dropping out focusing on city school. The article states that there
is a 50-50 chance of a student graduating on time in a city school-fewer than
40 percent of the largest city school district are graduating their students on
time; Baltimore-38.5 percent, New York- 38.9 percent, and Detroit 21.7 percent.
Personally I feel as though this could be caused by the attention to teaching
stypes that we discusses in class. If we remember back to the movie we were to
watch a couple weeks ago "Stand and Deliver" we observed some teachers that weren't
dedicated to altering their teaching styles in order to meet the needs of the
students. What is your opinion as to why the graduation rate is so low in American
cities and continuing to fall as we speak?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-06-20-dropout-rates_x.htm
Personally, I think there are many reasons why there is such a high rate of high school dropouts. First off, I think the economy has a lot to do with it. If kids are able to make money without an education it probably makes sense for them to leave school. Many kids in big cities drop out of school and start selling drugs, because they can probably make more money doing this than staying in school. Money is a huge motivating factor for all people so I think this leads to more tempting opportunities for kids.
I also think a lot has to do with the fact that our teachers are not getting paid enough for the work they do. Teachers especially in low income areas are underpaid, overworked and usually show signs of burnout because their job is so draining. Like we saw in Stand and Deliver, this makes teachers not care as much about their job and then the kids and education suffers.
I know that when I was in high school a kid in my grade dropped out just weeks before graduation. I was so shocked because it felt like if he just had someone there to motivate him to stick with school for a couple more weeks, he would have actually made it. It's sad that kids are able to drop out so easily in our society as well. Because of that, kids must possess some intrinsic motivation to ensure they make it through school and get an education.