Millions of Americans have now seen Waiting for "Superman", the documentary showing that an excellent education for low-income children is often a matter of chance. Viewers watch with angst as numbers are pulled from jars, identifying the few children who will have a chance at a quality education to break the bonds of poverty. Some make it; most don't.
The film is powerful -- showing the persistence of parents, the value of effective teachers, the centrality of high expectations, the dangers of low-performing schools, and the growing skills gap that is threatening American competitiveness.
What the film does not provide are scalable solutions in our public schools where the vast majority of children are found.
Hope is on the way. After a decade of gloomy reports on the achievement gap, high school dropout epidemic, and more recently the college completion gap, progress is finally being made in some of the most unexpected places.
This week, we are releasing a report showing that over the last decade high school graduation rates have increased significantly across a majority of states and the number of high school "dropout factories" -- those graduating 60 percent or less of their students -- has declined by 373 schools, nearly a 20 percent improvement.
Initially, progress was made most across 9 southern states, where the dropout problem has been most severe, but our data in the last year shows that gains also occurred in the West, Midwest and in urban and rural areas.
Urban school districts thought to be unfixable have been transformed with results. In New York City, the nation's largest public school system, the city's progress drove a 10-percentage-point gain across New York State from 2002 to 2008. Strong leadership, data driven innovations in school design, a chancellor shielded from politics by mayoral control, new leaders and new teachers with supports for both, and an increased focus on excellence and accountability contributed to the city's success.
Two cities in Ohio, Cincinnati and Canton, each raised their high school graduation rates by large double digits over the last decade. Success resulted from good data, a commitment to re-organizing schools, creating more personal learning environments, mobilizing wrap-around supports for the students most in need, and raising standards to ensure students are prepared for college.
Although 580,000 fewer students attend high school dropout factories, more than two million students still do. Nationally, we must increase efforts fivefold to meet the national goal of a 90 percent high school graduation rate by 2020.
A "Civic Marshall Plan" among organizations representing administrators, teachers, parents, policy makers and community leaders is underway. Targeting the dropout factory high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools, the plan sets concrete benchmarks for action around on-track reading, chronic absenteeism, early warning systems, school and community supports, and school transformation. The goal is both to graduate more students from high school and ensure they are college and career ready. Our case studies show that those schools that are raising standards and matching them with supports to students and teachers are having the most success.
Recent trends show accelerated progress is possible. For the first time, graduation rates will be measured consistently across the nation, and states and school districts will be accountable for meeting graduation targets; common standards preparing students for college and career are being adopted across states; the federal government is making historic investments in school transformation; early warning systems that predict the students likely to drop out are coming online; national non-profits are surrounding students and schools with critical supports; and national service is mobilizing full-time boots on the ground to provide thousands of struggling students the academic and emotional supports they need to get back on track. Congress needs to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and include provisions that will help stem the dropout tide.
Every student should have a chance at the American dream and the education required to achieve it. We now know who the potential dropouts are, where they attend school, and what causes them to drop out. With a focused response, we can ensure they become the supermen and women who fly into the future and fulfill their dreams.
John M. Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises, and Robert Balfanz, Co-Director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, are co-authors of Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic, 2010-2011 Annual Update released with the America's Promise Alliance and the Alliance for Excellent Education this week in Washington, DC.
Follow John Bridgeland on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@civicenterpris
If you want to send all the at-risk students who are building themselves a record and have probation officers to a boarding school, that would be fine. I'll support that. Makes the schools and the communities they have been pulled from safer. Other than that, please get the children who are dealing drugs, committing acts of violence, and stealing and vandalizing property away from MY children in the public schools. Is that REALLY too much to ask?
I'm sure it is. They might not get an "equal" education in some judges view and that would be the end of that.
Do my children have a right to a "safe and healthy" environment while they are getting their "free and equal" public education.
Not a chance.
Low income and minority students are the ones who benefit the most from being homeschooled. Instead of waiting for the schools to be fixed, just bring your kids home and teach them yourself.
Low-income and minority students who are homeschooled outperform middle class white kids who go to public schools. You don't need to wait for the government to rescue your kids. Just bring them home and teach them yourself.
There's an innovation in public health care that might be a good comparable for the Civic Marshall Plan : targeting "dropout factories" for higher funding and resources. If successful- in improving outcomes- that might be a code-cracker worthy of replication?
The low performing schools are in the areas where lower income prevails along with social problems. More money to hire more teachers and lower class size will be a great help. When you know the students and their problems respect is built and the student is willing to work harder. If you have 30 students of which 40% are struggling you do not have time to give individual attention.
Also, an alternative to "prepared for college" is needed. No, I am not saying don’t prepare them for college but have an alternative. Some students don't want to go, some do not have the basic skills and some will never have the money or the "whatever" it takes to get a scholarship. An "alternative" will give them success in a tech field or trade. Then we have a viable, contributing member of society.
This requires MONEY not punitive measures for the low performing schools.
I used to teach, and I lost a lot of my minority students who fell behaind and gave up because they had been told (within their sub-culture) that education was a "white thing." That alone accounts for a lot of the statistics. A Civic Marshall Plan that doesn't address this will fail.
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"the increase in graduation rate reflects a lowering of standards "
I don't understand how the first implies the second. Please explain.
One thing the article does not make clear, though, is whether the increase in graduation rates was in any way accompanied by a lowering of standards. The implication is that this was not the case, but it's never explicitly stated.
And a 10% gain in NYC is impressive. How did the Big Bad Union allow that accomplishment to happen?