Post by Moses on May 12, 2004 17:45:43 GMT -5
The newspapers always present the position of the Superintendant and the Institutional bosses when they editorialize on education. They never listen to parents whose children are actually in the public schools. (In DC, parents formed a committee to educate the editorial board, but were not listened to).
So what does the Houston Chronical propose? Expansion of the deadly and detrimental system:
Huge Societal Investment Needed to Reduce Dropouts
Criticized for inaccurately calculating its dropout rate and doing too little to reduce it, the Houston Independent School District Tuesday held a community summit. The purpose was to lay out the problem, solicit suggestions and request a sustained, citywide effort to correct it.
The scale of the problem could hardly be more severe. More than 70 percent of HISD students who reach high school graduate, but many students do not make it that far. Some never enroll.
Maria Robledo Montecel, executive director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, told summit participants that about half the students in Harris County drop out. Since 1986, when Montecel's group began tracking dropout rates, 2 million Texas students have left school prematurely, costing the state's economy half a trillion dollars and causing millions of individual tragedies for the dropouts and their families.
Dropping out, summit speakers said, is a long process of disengagement from education. The harm starts in the early years. Students from poor families and the children of teen parents or single-parent homes start at a disadvantage and are particularly prone to dropping out.
Chronic, often untreated illnesses ranging from dental cavities and ear infections to asthma, diabetes and cancer result in poor attendance. Students with poor attendance records fall behind, never catch up and leave without graduating.
Truancy is rampant and serves as an early warning of parental neglect and other problems at home. Truancy is not only a prelude to school leaving, it is a gateway to crime, expulsion and imprisonment.
Students held back a grade are at risk. Students failed in the ninth grade or held back for two years are almost guaranteed to become dropouts.
The dropout scourge leaves no demographic set untouched. One-third of white students, one-half of blacks and two-thirds of Hispanics drop out. For Hispanics born outside the United States, the dropout rate is three times that of the general population.
A committee appointed by HISD has recommended 42 tactics for treating the problem, including better tracking of students, more parental involvement, student mentoring, and better assessment of campus and teacher performance.
The participants at Tuesday's summit at the University of Houston offered more sweeping suggestions:
• Smaller, full-service schools offering medical treatment and all-day programs for the children of working parents.
• Pre-school classes and vigorous early childhood intervention for children at risk.
• Better support for pregnant teens and teen parents.
• After-hours classes for working students.
• Rescue squads to go after the fallen and bring them back to class.
These and other initiatives would necessitate a huge societal investment at a time of school budget cuts. Reducing the dropout rate requires not only community action by businesses, charities, professionals and other volunteers, but also a Legislature whose members care more about educating children than they do about adherence to some destructive ideology and their re-election.
Sure, schools cost more than they used to, when about 60 percent of students in Texas failed to complete high school. But look at what today's schools are being asked to do.
— Editorial
Houston Chronicle
2004-05-12
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2564087
So what does the Houston Chronical propose? Expansion of the deadly and detrimental system:
Huge Societal Investment Needed to Reduce Dropouts
Criticized for inaccurately calculating its dropout rate and doing too little to reduce it, the Houston Independent School District Tuesday held a community summit. The purpose was to lay out the problem, solicit suggestions and request a sustained, citywide effort to correct it.
The scale of the problem could hardly be more severe. More than 70 percent of HISD students who reach high school graduate, but many students do not make it that far. Some never enroll.
Maria Robledo Montecel, executive director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, told summit participants that about half the students in Harris County drop out. Since 1986, when Montecel's group began tracking dropout rates, 2 million Texas students have left school prematurely, costing the state's economy half a trillion dollars and causing millions of individual tragedies for the dropouts and their families.
Dropping out, summit speakers said, is a long process of disengagement from education. The harm starts in the early years. Students from poor families and the children of teen parents or single-parent homes start at a disadvantage and are particularly prone to dropping out.
Chronic, often untreated illnesses ranging from dental cavities and ear infections to asthma, diabetes and cancer result in poor attendance. Students with poor attendance records fall behind, never catch up and leave without graduating.
Truancy is rampant and serves as an early warning of parental neglect and other problems at home. Truancy is not only a prelude to school leaving, it is a gateway to crime, expulsion and imprisonment.
Students held back a grade are at risk. Students failed in the ninth grade or held back for two years are almost guaranteed to become dropouts.
The dropout scourge leaves no demographic set untouched. One-third of white students, one-half of blacks and two-thirds of Hispanics drop out. For Hispanics born outside the United States, the dropout rate is three times that of the general population.
A committee appointed by HISD has recommended 42 tactics for treating the problem, including better tracking of students, more parental involvement, student mentoring, and better assessment of campus and teacher performance.
The participants at Tuesday's summit at the University of Houston offered more sweeping suggestions:
• Smaller, full-service schools offering medical treatment and all-day programs for the children of working parents.
• Pre-school classes and vigorous early childhood intervention for children at risk.
• Better support for pregnant teens and teen parents.
• After-hours classes for working students.
• Rescue squads to go after the fallen and bring them back to class.
These and other initiatives would necessitate a huge societal investment at a time of school budget cuts. Reducing the dropout rate requires not only community action by businesses, charities, professionals and other volunteers, but also a Legislature whose members care more about educating children than they do about adherence to some destructive ideology and their re-election.
Sure, schools cost more than they used to, when about 60 percent of students in Texas failed to complete high school. But look at what today's schools are being asked to do.
— Editorial
Houston Chronicle
2004-05-12
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2564087
