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What's the Problem With US High Schools?
GrumpySimon asks: "ABC News is reporting that High School kids are dropping out of high school in 'epidemic proportions', with an estimated 2,500 kids quitting daily. What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead? How can this be fixed?"
It seems to be an America truism that "things get better after High School," and it wouldn't be surprising if most of you readers feel the same way. However, why does it have to be this way? What's the big problem with American High Schools where more and more children are feeling that it's better to risk the "real world" than to continue on with their education? Of course, another question that should be asked is: Is High School really the problem, or is it America's Educational system as a whole?
There's no doubt that dropout rates are a major U.S. problem, but the ABC article would make one think that dropout rates are on the rise. Nationally, this just isn't true. Between 1972 and 2004, dropout rates have fallen drastically. For all ethnicities, they are now almost half what the rates were 30 years ago (note: the full article that references this table can be found here)
This doesn't mean that isolated cities (such as Detroit and Baltimore) that have experienced serious economic problems and urban blight are better than 30 years ago, they are likely worse, but to characterize the problem as a national "epidemic" is completely ignoring the truth. Our school systems, teachers, and local governments have been working hard to raise graduation rates nationwide. And the data supports their assertion that they are seeing some success. Sure, there are MAJOR shortcomings to our public school system, but there has been major progress that shouldn't go unrecognized.
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
It seems to be an America truism that "things get better after High School," and it wouldn't be surprising if most of you readers feel the same way. However, why does it have to be this way?
I think a lot of the reasons things "get better after high school" is because of the age you are when in high school. I didn't know who I was, took people's opinions of me too seriously, and couldn't get the girl I liked to notice me. I was definitely excited to get out of high school because of how glorious college was made out to be. I didn't read the article, I'm sure it got involved to level at which i just wouldn't care, I assume that the kids they're talking about dropping out aren't then enrolling in college but it just seems like a lot of those feelings stem from puberty and the social environment created by forcing kids of those ages to interact.
Given that most high schools are run as assembly-line institutions with often ridiculous learning-hindering schedules, policies and rules, and given the absurd amount of time routinely wasted in high school classes, this is hardly surprising. I'd estimate 20% of the time I spent in high school classes was even remotely productive.
/Practically never studied
//Graduated with a 3.9
///Didn't learn what an imaginary number actually was until college. Why the high school teacher couldn't just say "the square root of -1" eludes me. Our instructions were to use a calculator program to find it.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
The world needs ditch diggers too...
Lowest common denominator.
What's really sad is a lot of recent grads won't understand either the math or the implication of that statement.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
John Taylor Gatto argues that American education fails to properly educate because it was not designed to educate. It was designed to create good consumers.
I think public education is severely broken in the US, for many reasons:
* single-classroom style -- many students learn in ways that do not work with a single classroom and oral lectures, which is the style almost all high schools use. Almost never are students allowed independent study, and even if they only learn from reading, they are still required to sit in class, which is a complete waste for them
* forced attendance -- by forcing people to attend, there is no motivation to make the most out of it. There is no real opportunity cost to being in the classroom, making a high percentage of people there unmotivated to learn.
* low pay -- financing education on the local level means limited funds to attract highly educated and highly functional people. While most high school teachers are extremely motivated and devoted, the simple financial reality is that jobs that pay 20-40K/year do not attract top quality people. This is part of a larger issue of simple limited resources put on education
* separation of teaching from learning -- mostly in real life, people become experts and learn things when they turn around and teach others. Almost never are high school students given the chance to teach what they learn, and almost never are their rewards for them in teaching others.
* national curricula -- teachers have almost no flexibility on what they teach or the ability to customize lessons for what students really need to learn. Learning is an interactive process that drawn a person to a new understanding from their current one. Set teaching standards eliminate the ability of teachers to understand what their students know now and customize the lessons for maximal learning.
* lack of content applicability -- most lessons in high school are useless and disconnected from real world applications. They are abstracted and meaningless for students who dont experience how to apply what they learn. Mostly, high school has become a babysitting exercise to keep people out of the work force as long as possible to remove competition for existing workers.
In sum, kids dropping out makes sense to me. High school is not helpful to them. This situation will only continue as virtual communities continue to form and become more organized and effective.
I graduated in 2001 from a private Catholic high school that I actually liked quite a bit. However, there were still "problems". Let's ignore the obvious social stuff (which, to a very large degree, can never be fixed) and the fact that I just like smaller schools better.
What was there to hold my interest? There was a Drafting class that I found fascinating, but Drafting 2 was never offered because they couldn't get enough students. I got up through Physics 2, and we had Calc. But I liked computer and the only computer classes were typing, how to use office, and a very basic C++ class (all of which I knew by that time by teaching myself). The rest of the classes tended to bore me (except the ones on the history of the Church, because that was stuff that I hadn't heard before). The only other class I remember really liking was the Econ class because the teacher did a fantastic job (but most other students though it was boring... it was Econ after all). I kind of liked Psychology, but the teacher for that was terrible and while he seemed to be interested in the subject, he wasn't an enjoyable professor (quite dry, by the book, do this, do that). Some other teachers were just terrible (the Calc guy was as stiff as a board and just about killed my interest in Math). There was also Accounting and Business Law which appealed to me. But nearly every one of these classes I liked had a good teacher (important and hard to control) and was optional or had other more common substitutes (so if you didn't go looking to take it, chances are you wouldn't).
There wasn't much in the way of arts classes at all that I remember. If they were there they were purely optional. You had to take Gym. They did offer some interesting things (like Ballroom Dancing, which I regret not taking).
I didn't have nearly as much problems in College because I got to take the classes I was interested in (CS) along side requirements (some of which, like Sociology, I found interesting). High schools have become VERY focused on getting you into college (and every grade before on getting you into that next grade). My HS was college prep too (they advertised that). To a certain degree, I wonder how well anyone who goes through a decent American HS is prepared for the world. They seem to be like middle school now. It's EXPECTED you'll go to college. If you don't, you're either in a no skill job or you go to trade school. How about offering a metal shop class? We didn't have that, but it would have been fun. We were too college prep for that. No wood shop.
I'm not going to claim I know how to fix 'em. It's complex. But I know they did very little to encourage independent learning in the core classes unless you had a FANTASTIC teacher or you already liked the subject. Otherwise, it was "strictly business". And the less advanced your school (like a poorer one), the worse that all might be.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
My Story.
I was a junior in High School, about 10 years ago. One day I had intense nausea and a sharp pain in my back. I went up to the nurses office to seek assistance. I was promptly denied any assistance, as I did not have a "hall pass".
Realizing my situation required medical attention, I left. I proceeded towards my car in the parking lot, with the intention of going to the hospital to get the care I needed. I was intercepted by campus security. I ignored their pleas for me to return to campus, and continued towards my car. Eventually I was physically stopped by a mid 30s campus cop, a female about 5' 4" with very short hair. I told her I needed to go to the hospital, and that I was leaving.
The officer beat me up (as in a fistfight), kicking my knee out and using her baton. I was incapable of fighting back in my condition, and made no effort to do so. She dragged me back to campus, where I was made to sit in the office until the end of the school day. No one ever spoke to me or the officer regarding the incident, but she did stay nearby to insure I did not leave. No medical care was ever offered, despite my requests that they now call 911.
After school was released several hours later, I went to the hospital and was treated for a kidney stone.
What is wrong with our schools is that this can a) happen and b) get blown off completely; as it is obviously my fault for seeking medical attention and since I was a student, I must have started the fight with the rent-a-cop.
~Rebecca
It's an unfortunate truth, but if you can't do something unique with your life, well, too bad, kay? Some of us actually have to think of ways to reinvent ourselves and do creative, individual things to keep our jobs. -An angry fashion designer.
While there is plenty, at least arguably, wrong with our schools, the most likely reason people would drop out of high school to work is that there is something wrong with our economy where increasingly families can't adequately provide for children while they are in school; the economy that has been doing well in aggregate terms hasn't been doing well in distributional terms.
That's the problem. It really isn't about education.
In high school you are surrounded by people who either a) don't give a shit, or b) are spineless fools doing whatever necessity to get marks. The a)'s should be allowed (if not encouraged) to leave, and the b)'s are a product of the education system gone wrong. In their eyes, something is right if it is marked right, and vice versa. The actual truth is irrelevant. Neither the a)'s nor the b)'s care about learning.
High school is more about social control than anything else. "Do as we say or you have no future," is what is told, and there's sadly too much truth to it. The people who simply want to learn away from the fast majority of idiots are pretty much SOL.
Those aren't bugs, they are features. How else is school supposed to prepare students for life as corporate (or government) drones?
- Maybe not all people are want the jobs that requires a high-school education.
- Maybe some people are just stupid and would rather do meaningful work then spend time being spoon-fed academic work that won't use anyway.
- Maybe it's PARENT'S faults: not holding their children to standards such as completing their homework and actually understanding the material, which in turn makes the kids' grades lower and makes them despondent about school.
- Perhaps the parents aren't being very involved and interested in the children's school work, and the kids are taking the hint from their parents regarding how important school is.
My general point: If the roles of all parties involved were clearly defined, it would be meaningful to discuss who's screwing up. But the idealized roles aren't clearly defined - there's no known single formula for successful public eduction. So it's not rational to assume the schools are the parties with the problem.
My opinion on this topic is that current problems in education are a result of not treating students with proper respect. Some will consider this statement completely backward, thinking that students should be treating the faculty with more respect. However, I think students perceive that standardized test grades are the only thing that matter to the schools. Whatever talents or interests a student may have, only the grades matter -- not the student as a person. This perception by the students is demeaning to them. They are only worth the grades they earn. In that case, I completely understand why they would want to leave school, go to work, and be "graded" on real-world tasks, not academic standardized tests. Treat the student more like a rational, sensitive, and valuable person and I think you will see them enjoying their education a little more and staying in school. Of course, it also helps to find ways to make the subject matter interesting. I've also seen far too many faculty who repeat the same tired old riff year after year. Keep it fresh, folks.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
When you show up and work 40 hours a week and try to do a good job, people actually appreciate it. They'll even thank you for being helpful and doing a good job. It's rewarding and satisfying. Work is an accomplishment. And they pay you.
No one thanks you for going to school. You're forced to go there. No one appreciates your contributions. There are no rewards. School is a process that a person goes through. No one cares about you at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the process.
I don't think a big increase in funding so the teachers can have a lower health-care co-pay is the answer.
This is a special time for everyone because media ubiquity is reaching a head. It's possible now to find out things happening anywhere in the world just a few minutes after they happen. In many ways it shrinks the globe.
I'm a Generation-X'er, sandwiched in between the days of the baby boomers and unending patriotism (I call these the "my country right or wrong" days) and the Generation Y types (as in "why", as in "why bother".) Generation X is the first generation to grow up with computers and all that they entail. We have the distinction of being the first generation that can program a VCR, but we also are the first generation to grow up in disillusionment. We grew up knowing that the CIA imports cocaine and that our government sells arms to foreign countries and then goes to war with them a handful of years later. X is the first generation that doesn't believe [statistically] that the government has our best interests in mind.
Generation Y, then, is the product of our cynicism. It seems to be a generation of depression, while the Baby Boomers are the generation of ignorance and hypocrisy. Most baby boomers are still in denial about their role in handing over our freedoms to corporate america, and are busy blaming it all on the permissive society X'ers are trying to build. Y'ers don't much see the point in, well, much of anything. They're even more disillusioned than we are; at least X'ers didn't grow up in a time of utterly prevalent school shootings.
That's the overall societal issue that I think is increasing the dropout rate, but there are several other extremely compelling reasons why school is a sad joke and why kids don't want to be there.
One of them is that the economy is in the toilet. Things are probably going to get a lot worse before they get better, and let's face it, while kids are easily led, they aren't necessarily stupid. Besides, the average adult is easily led as well. I know that when I was in high school, I too dropped out and got a job. In my case, it was because we were poor, and if I wanted money, I had to go out and earn it. This is a pretty minor reason but it occurred to me early on.
Another is that school's purpose is not to teach you, it's to train you. The scholastic benefits of school are utterly secondary to the primary purpose. Our school system was designed to produce factory workers. Once upon a time, that was what we needed, but now we have less and less factory jobs (although, go back a point; we may have more of them in the future, though our quality of life will be next to nothing compared to what it is now) and we're still producing factory workers. Think about the qualities that get you through school with the least effort: you should be a conformist, because the nail that pops up gets hammered down. You need to get up early and show up early, or you get in trouble. You need to do precisely what you are told or they will kick you out, send you to an alternative school, and basically put you on the fast track to incarceration. The school system is designed to erase as much individuality as possible. Kids are getting wiser to this sort of thing as time goes by and they get access to more and more media at earlier and earlier ages.
And of course, the administration is complicit in the whole program. They want things to run smoothly and their primary goal is to avoid problems. Meanwhile, programs like "No Child Left Behind" are so obviously designed to produce mediocrity that it's almost unbelievable that no one seems to have noticed. I mean, I was in GATE as a kid and even THERE they told me that I couldn't do certain things because I wasn't old enough. Now, those kids who are most likely to excel will get even less attention than they always have, because the time must be spent with the children least likely to succeed by teaching them skills that they will never even use effectively. The system is designed to produce automatons.
So, why are so many kids dropping out? M
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They'll just try to teach you a bunch of evil stuff about Darwin and other Godless Commies.
Content aside, the problem is that actually teaching has become really difficult these days in schools. With the (non-funded) requirements put on schools by "No Child Left Behind", Bush has recreated nationally the same mess he made as Governor of Texas. Kids aren't being taught in school, they're being made to memorize, and they're trained to take a specific test, which hasn't even been proven a valid metric.
Maybe if the teachers were actually allowed to teach the kids, they could actually engage them appropriately and keep them in school.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Unfortunately there is nothing particularly "current" about that zeitgeist.
It is isn't the schools, it's American culture. The schools reflect the anti-intellectualism of the culture. Our schools suck because parents and communities are willing to blame everything but their own disinterest in education, and therefore do nothing to fix the problem.
Let me start this with a thesis statement: I go to school to learn, not to do work.
The main problem I see these days with the US educational system is the fact that students are graded upon how much work they do, rather than how much they know, or how much effort they put forth to learn.
All too often I've come close to failing in my classes because I didn't do some useless assignment, and yet, still I have a perfect grasp of the concepts that were "taught". That's not right. Theoretically, if I failed, I shouldn't know the material, right? Wrong.
Also, assignments should only be given as necessary. I have one particular math teacher who, even after every person in the class has shown that they get the material, still gives out work on it. If they've shown they can do it, then what's the point in giving out more work, and wasting time that could be spent on teaching the next concept?
Now let me move on to incompetent teachers. Any teacher who needs to rely on a book as a primary source of teaching, need not be teaching. If you can't teach the concept yourself, with minimal help from a book, then you need to go back and learn it some more yourself.
All your reading ability are belong to me.
My dad is back teaching in a southern Colorado highschool after a 15 year break...the big things he complains about are:
1) No real disipline....students are disruptive and can pretty much do anything (non-violent) that they please because the school district fears lawsuits.
2) Actual teaching becomes secondary because of the babysitting requirements.
3) What actual teaching is done is totally scripted by the administration (the teachers have a very narrow guideline to follow) and basically amounts to programming for the standardized proficiency exams.
4) All the students are treated as if they are university-bound. He feels that this leads to a swiss-army approach that does a marginal job at best.
My personal experience coming out of the same school in 1992 and going directly into an engineering program is that I was not prepared academically or mentally for what I ran into at Colorado School of Mines. Looking back at it now I wish I had worked several years (or done military service) before ever considering engineering, and considering what a job that school was doing then, I would have better off dropping out at 16 and working and getting a GED....the education (or lack thereof) would have been the same and I would have had at least some money and life experience under my belt before tackling engineering....
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
Could you imagine if we had ONE government run auto company? Imagine everyone paid taxes and was provided with a "free" car from this government car company. The rich would say to hell with it and go off and buy a Lexus or a Mercedes, but the poor and most of the middle class would take the crap government car because they already paid for it. This is exactly what has happened to our education system and I'm always amazed more people aren't outraged. The poor go to crappy public schools because its the only choice, the middle class go to crap and mediocre public schools because they already paid for it, and the rich and some middle class send their kids to quality private schools.
The solution is to expose schools to competition... support school vouchers and school choice so that you break up the government run monopoly. The ROOT problem is the government run monopoly, and it must be addressed.
Every time I see something like this, I get confused as to why people are confused. The public schools are no longer intended to educate. Students are required to be there. Schools are required to take students. In some cases, students that do not want to be there are required to be there, and the school does not want the disruptive student to be there either. If schools were more optional, more open to getting rid of students that don't want to learn, then they could focus on teaching. Instead, they are babysitting unwilling children. The easy fix is get the parents involved. However, the parents don't want that, it's too much work for them. They want the schools to fix the problem they created.
Do I have an easy solution? No. If I were put in charge of everything tomorrow, I'd probably do away with mainstreaming. We have schools for "gifted" students, why not schools to huddle the lower 10% together as well (excluding the truly special needs that are currently separated)? Get the top 10% the education that challenges them, the bell curve of the middle 80% will have them closer to together without the outliers, and the 10% that aren't as motivated or skilled will be put in separate programs designed to try to bring them back from the edge or at least get them ready for a vocation.
Which brings me back to something else that bothers me about the US. What's wrong with a vocation? There seems to be some stigma attached to trying to teach skills in high school, as if college is expected and that skills are taught there. There seems to be a decrease in automotive and shop classes in high schools. And there seems to be a stigma attached to someone that likes working with their hands. I've never understood that, but it is another thing that should change in the US.
Learn to love Alaska
> If you put it away in a bank account and later into a Savings Bond
> or similar, you'd have a much larger amount of cash in the long run
> compared to someone who finishes school and then gets a job and
> starts saving/investing.
For a few years, yeah. Then you wake up and realize you're thirty-five, out of work, looking for a job, hoping you can find one where you can make eight bucks an hour, which is hard, because most of the stuff you're qualified to do can just as well be done by somebody in Hyderabad who makes eight bucks a day.
There are exceptions, certain careers you can pick that are going to be reasonably good without a lot of school-and-book learning, because the training is more hands-on type of stuff. Diesel repair is a good example of this. But such jobs are the exception, not the rule. If you drop out of school to work a cash register, no amount of scrimping and saving and earning interest is going to put you ahead financially.
Of course, money is not, despite what you may have heard, really the most important thing in life. It's nice to have, but it will not make you happy, nor will the lack of it _keep_ you from being happy. (Messed-up family relationships, on the other hand, _can_ keep you from being happy. Never screw up your family relationships over a career.)
And a good education, quite independent of fiscal concerns, is also really nice to have, although it, too, will not by itself make you happy, nor will the lack of it keep you from being happy. And there are other ways to get one besides going to college, and it is easily possible to go to college and not get one, although on the whole going to college is a good approach, and one I generally recommend. I am pretty pleased with what I got out of college.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The idea that the point of an education is to learn about the world is naive, it's to prove to employers you are willing and able to work for N years to achieve a result. If it were the former there would be no exams, no coursework and no awards of degrees.
So if employers don't care about being a high school graduate or if there are no jobs which require a high school graduate, there isn't much point going on to complete your high school education and then go on to university to rack up $150,000 in debt.
The fact that jobs are being shipped overseas says it's hardly worthwhile .
p.s. why does it cost $150,000 to go through university? Seems like rather a lot, surely with that kind of income there would be lots of colleges, academies and universities springing up and competing to reduce the costs.
Deleted
I'm not sure where your evidence for this is. I've known a lot of private schools, all of which were non-unionized, and they were all considered to be far superior to the public schools located in the same areas.
Additionally, most of them paid teachers significantly less than public-school teachers. On paper, they should have sucked: non-union, basically no job security if you pissed off the wrong person, long hours, low pay. And yet, they routinely got more qualified instructors -- people who were actual experts in their fields -- and graduated students who went on to be more successful. Why is this? I don't have a totally pat answer for you, but I think that most of their success is because of the institutions themselves: people are willing to go and teach there, even though they're not unionized and the pay is lower, because they're good places to work. Class sizes are smaller, teachers get more freedom to plan lessons and curricula, and the perceived 'quality' of the students (interest, motivation, background education) is higher.
In my experience, unions and the job security that they offer don't do much to attract the best talent. If anything, they attract the mediocre, who are seeking a job that it's difficult to get fired from. Improve working conditions, and you'll probably find more people willing to work who really know their subject and want to teach it. Throwing money at the problem, which is what the unions generally ask for, is not a solution.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Then you were failing at something that school is also supposed to teach you along with reading, writing, and 'rithmetic: Self-discipline. If there's one thing that school, both high school and college, taught me, it is that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do in order to be better off later on. Hopefully you had a parent or two that drilled that into your head where your school let you down.
That won't get you very far in a job interview. If you're not willing to do the bare minimum of what it takes to get through high school, I don't care how smart you are, I don't want you working for me. If I'm an employer looking to hire someone, there's a pretty good chance that they'll be bored to tears at some point with their job. I don't want them skipping out on me just because they have to be amused and entertained the whole time I'm paying them.
The fact is that the vast majority of kids who don't finish high school are pretty stupid. Yes, there are weird exceptions. Yes, I even know at least one. But for every one of them, there are a hundred people who are dumb as doornails who simply give up on it because they lack the self-discipline to see something that is really not that hard through. They're sacrificing their long-term economic health for the short-term gratification of not having to study, take tests, and otherwise jump through the hoops one has to in order to graduate.
A huge contributing factor to our nation's kids' lack of self-discipline is our nation's parents' lack of self-discipline. How many times have we seen parents ignore, or worse, coddle and try to mollify their youngsters who are upset about something, instead of disciplining them? How many times have we read about kids getting kicked off a football team, and the parents raising a ruckus and getting the teacher into trouble for it? Even the best educational system in the world can't do much with that kind of parenting.
We definitely need some tough love, but we're screwed if we expect it to only come from the schools.
To answer the original poster's questions:
I know this is the wrong place to get any sympathy, but what the heck, it's only slashdot karma I'll lose. What's wrong with the high schools in the US is they are all too dang liberal. I remember in high school I had one conservative teacher, and he was the band director. Of course no one wants to be in high school! With all the liberal teachers I had, one encouraged students to share their viewpoints, while all the other forced all their dogma and beliefs down our throats at best, and worse case scenario penalized students for having "wrong" beliefs. There was a valedictorian girl at one of the schools in the district that wrote this great paper on the 2nd amendment and the right to bear arms, and the teacher gave her an F, so she played the teachers game and wrote a paper on Hillary Clinton, and ended up with an A. Don't tell me that's not penalizing students with differing beliefs.
The next problem is the teachers are mostly under qualified. Many a days in Pre-Calculus I spent correcting the teacher when she did a problem wrong, or going up to the board and solving the problem when she got so tired of my correcting her all the time. It was a joke! When other students had problems in the class no one dared ask the teacher to try to explain for fear of getting more confused than they already were. And don't even get me started on the A+ Certification course. The official teacher was Mrs. Huerta, but she knew nothing about the material. The above conservative mentioned band director, my friend Chris, and I ended up running that class. Even the Teaching Assistant couldn't grasp most of the concepts in the A+ Certification book we were going through.
Sam
Parents.
- Many parents expect the schools to fix their poor parenting skills
- Disruptive students cannot be easily removed from an otherwise productive classroom
- Suing the schools for any perceived slight (such as having a dress code dictating no long hair or earrings for males)
- Basing school budgets on how many children can get federal handouts via school lunch programs
These are just a few of the reasons that schools are less about learing and more about jobs and promote more dropouts.
School lunch programs are a prime example, if the child would starve or be less than properly fed without a school lunch program, then shouldn't the child be removed via child protective services from the parents during summer because the parents admit that they cannot feed the child and need schools to provide free food.
Many states education programs are funded by:
- how many students attend school each day (daily attendence)
- how many students are on school lunch programs (federal per student subsidy)
We should give kids who graduate highschool on time a $1000 bonus, cash, no strings attached. They can spend it on college, a car, gas, CDs, or crack (as long as they don't get caught), whatever. Maybe kids who graduate only a year late can get $500.
It costs over $30K:y to jail people. Plus the damage they did to go to jail. Plus the lost productivity from them both while commiting crimes and in jail. Plus their reduced productivity with jail on their career record. Plus the lost productivity policing, judging and jailing them. All deducted from their value producing even $30K:y at a job, without consuming justice system resources. By the time you account for the two parallel lives, we're probably saving at least $50K:y, maybe $100K:y, for every kid who gets a legit job instead of a criminal career, for probably at least 2-5 years per person. So every $1000 kid kept straight saves probably $300K - paying for 299 kids who got their bonus who would have stayed straight anyway. Those kids get to reinvest the money in something productive (except the tiny percentage who will spend it on crack).
We graduate about 3M kids from HS every year in the US. Even if the stats in this article we're discussing weren't a 31% dropout rate just in "the nation's 100 largest public school districts", but nationwide, that means a maximum of under 4.5M kids getting a maximum of $1K each, which would cost $4.5B a year. The extra $9K a year more than dropouts that HS grads earn would pay back the $1K right away; if the dropout rate were lowered only 5 points, they'd still pay back the program in 7 years. And that's before counting the societal savings in working instead of going to jail.
Let's invest $1000 in each grad. Or waste many times more on criminals.
--
make install -not war
Man, a lot of people sure are whining about how the high school machine is interested in cranking out thoughtless droids in order for the corporate system to maintain control over helpless consumers, ruining education by teaching to a narrow test (never mind that the majority of Americans can't keep "your" and "you're" straight), or teaching kids in a way that is not best suited to them, or teaching things that "don't matter in the real world."
These are probably the people dropping out of high school. Grow up, people!
The standardized tests test for perfectly acceptable topics: basic grammar, reading comprehension, and basic math. The majority of the kids dropping out are most likely the ones who cannot accomplish these things. So if you are getting bored in class because the teacher won't teach "outside of the box", take it upon your self to learn these things, but don't quit high school! First of all, if you can afford it, you can simply switch schools. Second of all, even though you might be convinced you are a super genius, people hiring you will be a little less than convinced if you couldn't sit through four years of high school.
If your teachers or administrators are jerks, notify someone. Figure out exactly what they are doing wrong (say, not letting you leave for a medical emergency) and report them to the proper authorities. I truly feel sorry for you if you get a bad teacher that can't teach worth shit, but even if you go to a small school like I did, you'll get a different teacher next year who can explain things to you. Oh, I know, why don't expend some effort and go to a different teacher of that subject for help? When your teachers refuse to help you, provided you are putting forth an effort, go to the principal or the guidance counselor. If you don't like the way the system is being run, there are smarter ways to fix things than quitting high school.
Also, as much as you might put stock in the Great Sheeple Conspiracy, seriously, take off your tin foil hat.
I don't understand why people drop out of high school. It's free (unlike college), and it's only going to take away 1 or 2 years of your life. Even if high school is useless for you, I don't see what plans you could possibly have that would be ruined by your continued attendance in high school. It may suck, but seriously, that diploma is important.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Hello Enoent
/. is a place were most participants can be reasoned with and asked to use reason. I get a bit tired of seeing emotional and non-logical responses to actual problems
To be blunt (but hopefully not offensive) your comment appears to be based on an emotional reaction that is short circuiting your ability to think logically in this area.
Blaming religious beliefs for lack of school participation is a thin argument at best IMHO. Worse it distracts from finding a solution.
I suspect the problems are more likely a set of cultural problems that are being ignored.
Here is a little conjecture:
-If parents were more involved with the education of their children their children would see more success in academic efforts. This success would be more likely to lead to academic interest. (Cultural change: 'the teachers are supposed to teach my kids')
-If high school were designed to give children a boost into the areas of their interest we would see less wasted talent and a higher number of experts coming from our colleges. (Cultural change: 'worked for me')
-If teachers were paid better and given more resources the job of teacher would be more sought after and a higher degree of competent teachers would be the likely result (if at the very least because higher competition would allow administrators more choices therefore weeding out those who are poor teachers). (Cultural change: 'sports stars deserve a 50 million dollar contract teachers should be happy enough just teaching my kids')
-If research into improved teaching methods were well funded and the higher levels of academia were willing to teach the new methods we would see a greater number of kids 'getting it' in a given subject, which would be very likely to heavily cut down on dropouts.(Cultural change: 'it worked for me')
Those are my thoughts based on observation, problem solving and logic.
I would honestly like to hear yours.
(I apologize if the beginning is offensive to you, however I think
Thanks for your understanding.)
It's appropriate that this question appears following the death of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milt Friedman, one of the founders of the school choice movement.
On Charlie Rose almost exactly a year ago, Friedman drew this analogy: The government identifies a proper subsidy -- let's say, food. So does it subsidize the *producer*? That is, does it give money to farmers or grocery stores, and tell them to provide food to people who live within a certain geographic area? Of course not -- that would be absurd. It subsidizes *consumers*, by giving them vouchers (we call them "food stamps") that they can then use to shop around and look for the best value.
The entire model we have set up for education is terrible, from theory to practice.
Allowing a quasi-government monopoly to exercise near-complete control of our most precious resource -- our children -- is INSANE. The monopoly will try to do what ANY monopoly does: Freeze the status quo and defend it to the death.
We will never make any REAL progress in education in this country until we understand that our Public School model has some real problems of a systemic, organizational nature, that can't be solved simply by throwing money at them.
- Alaska Jack
Another of John's books is "Dumbing us Down." There are other authors out there who have the same opinions, are better writers, but don't have John's inside experience.
Don't worry: My generation is retiring soon, and they will start letting the prisoners out early to earn money and pay the taxes necessary to support us old folks (who might have to depend on the Medicaid/Medicare/Social Security plans that have been so mismanaged by the government). Then the "dropout rate" will be encouraged rather than disparaged.
Since the USA workers will be too ignorant to earn high wages, look for more immigration in both the low-paying and high-tech areas. It's a real win for business and government. Business wins because they can pay 75% of what they would have to pay a US citizen, Government wins because the salaries earned are in the higher tax brackets, the immigrant wins because what he sends home is significantly more than his family would have if he were living and earning in his own country.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Public school really didn't teach me a damn thing and I'm not exaggerating. It was a place that would watch me while my mother worked so she could eat out & buy shoes for herself. As a baby sitter, it was fine. As an educator, to say it was lacking is an understatement.
During my sophomore year in high school, we actually took an entire day to learn how to read an analog clock. I didn't require school instruction to figure out how to read a clock... and... I had it mastered by age five. Every class was like that. Always scratching the surface of a topic over and over again... never actually teaching anything. So much of school is about trivial things like not talking to your classmates, being silent, and sitting still. I don't find it a very effective nor social environment.
I'm one of the few that realized if I want to learn, I'm going to have to do it myself... outside of school. As a taxpayer, I'm furious that we are forced to pay for something so broken. The states are literally lobotomizing our youth by wasting their most precious learning years. You don't need school or teachers to learn. You need an interest and a way to get answers. Period.
... like our society's expectations for our public school system.
Instead of preparing students for adulthood or college (yes, they can be -- and usually are -- different), we have assigned our public schools as the surrogate baby-sitters, keeping our children occupied, but not placing much more in the way of expectations on them.
This is a parental problem -- and by that, I mean a problem with the parents. There are parents who want to ensure that their children are prepared for college, and they are moving their kids to private schools, or home schooling them, or moving to homes situated in the better school districts.
However, that only prepares kids for college, and may or may not prepare them for adulthood. Especially an unimaginable adulthood.
It used to be that kids could get a glimmer of how to be an adult be emulating their parents, who in turn were following their parents down life's pathways. This includes a lot more than simply careers, things like social standing, moral behavior, and how to deal with life's challenges.
But when both parents are scrambling to make sense out of a world that is radically different from anything they were prepared for, it's no surprise that kids are set adrift in life.
I have no answers, I only understand the problem.
Meanwhile the teachers have been 'educated' by the same system. They care nothing about teaching the students but if, God forbid, one of your actions should appear (in their fantasy world) to be an infringement of their constitutional rights, they'll scream like hell about it. The teachers of course think nothing of dressing like hookers and wearing T-shirts with obscenities emblazoned across them. (Of course not, they work for a government establishment and so their freedom of speech can't be restrained.)
Every morning the students all chant the Pledge of Allegiance. And periodically through the day they're encouraged to chant bizarre things like "I must express who I really am", "I have the right to be whoever I want" or some such American-style psychobabble. You probably think I'm making things up at this point. Maybe my wife is making this stuff up when she comes home from work, but I doubt it. This is what it means to be educated in California.
I also do voluntary work with kids in the area, trying to encourage an interest in science. The sad thing is that there are plenty of younger kids who have great potential. But so many of these kids have next to no chance of going anywhere with that potential.
Of course not all of California is like this. I live near an enclave of rich white-skinned people whose education district seceded from the surrounding city. House prices are through the roof there because apparently you can learn things in the few schools they have.
Still, a lot could have happened in the last ten years. Maybe it's like this in Britain now.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Media spin my ass. Are you asking for someone to report that, to quote Lewis Black, "We took our school[s] from the truly shitty shitty shitty, to stinky farty smelly?"
Considering there are about 16+ million high school students ( http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p20-533.pdf ), it should not be surprising to hear that an estimated 1 or 2 students don't make the cut out of a 30 student class. That was certainly the case when I was in high school over a decade a ago. Moreover, is anyone really -that- surprised that our larger school districts, which were the focus of that article, pull in the largest dropout rates?
Moreover, that ABC article is not even accounting for grade inflation, problems with standardized testing, and lowered standards. We're arguably giving diplomas to more and more people who probably wouldn't have received them 20 or 30 years ago.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Of course that was 20 (yikes) years ago, so perhaps my reasons were different from what is being tracked now.
I was first enrolled in public schools in San Francisco, California during the 70s. I was lucky to be an advanced kid, moved ahead in kindergarten to gifted/AP classes because my parents taught me how to read, write and perform simple math before I started school. I loved school and found it extremely stimulating but by the time I reached high school things started taking a turn for the worse.
California passed Proposition 13 ("People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation") in 1978, and although its long term impacts can be debated, effects in the classroom were pretty clear to me. I went from class sizes of 25 to 40; we frequently had no textbooks (ah the smell of freshly "dittoed" paper); equipment was shoddy and never replaced; teachers were visibly overwhelmed. I went from being a smart, attentive kid to being a really bored kid who found nonsanctioned extracurricular ways to be engaged.
If I had the resources to transfer to a private or specialized public school might I have reengaged or was I just headed for delinquency regardless? Who knows, but when I dropped out in my senior year I promptly enrolled in our local community college and took classes while working for the next 5 years. From there I went on to obtain my bachelors and masters degrees -- college gave me much more of what I needed in terms of structure, challenge and independent growth.
My parents weren't happy that I dropped out but their take on it was that the school system wasn't providing me with what I needed, and the college system might. I definitely wasn't ready for a 4 year program (either in terms of academic preparation or in having goals to achieve) but just taking college level classes and having the time to try things out was invaluable for me. Work alone would not have provided me with what I needed.
I'm not entirely comfortable with the standard track where kids plow through high school and go straight to the 4 year college. It seems like they are expected to know what they want to do in too short of a time. Granted, some do -- and some just spend a lot of time partying, being a waste of tuition payments, and end up in less than satisfying jobs wondering "WTF am I doing with myself". There's a lot to be said for growth using other exercises, like traveling or learning to support oneself.
It's not enough to track the dropout rate; you have to know what people do when they drop out. It actually makes me curious to know how many people fulfill their reqs for masters or doctorate and then never complete the thesis work...
Science is about what is, not what we believe or hope. -- Dr. Lonnie Thompson, glaciologist, Ohio State University
4.4% unemployment rate right now. If you can get the job you want, why stay in school?
Half of high school graduates go to college, and half of them graduate. And many college graduates get jobs that don't require degrees too.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
To go a step further, I think the now-universal sense of entitlement kids feel can be traced directly to their parents. Baby boomers have pretty much had their cake and eaten it too and definitely show a strong sense of entitlement and arrogance in regards to the culture, wealth and values they feel they created. In the most basic sense, they are still kids and treat their kids as friends, not as kids. Their kids now expect the same luxury as their "friends" despite not having lived and earned it.
3rd Grade: "Welcome to Science Class! Today, we'll be learning about the metric system!"
7th Grade: "Welcome to Science Class! Today, and all of this week, we'll be learning about the metric system!"
9th Grade: "Welcome to Biology! Today, and all of this week, we'll be learning about the metric system!"
10th Grade: "Welcome to Chemistry! Today, and all of this week, we'll be learning about the metric system!"
11th Grade: "Welcome to Physics! Today, and all of this week, we'll be learning about the metric system!"
1st year of College: "Welcome to Organic Chemistry! Today, and all of this week, we'll be learning about the metric system!"
It was at this point that I snapped, killed five classmates with a rubber eraser, and was sent to a mental institution.
Mental Institution: "Hello everybody! Did you know that you all are unique, special snowflakes?!"
Aaah, much better. I still twitch every time someone uses the word "centimeter" or offers to sell me a two-liter bottle.
No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring.
I know nobody, especially not Slashdot moderators, will ever read this comment, so I'll post it with my karma bonus.
The American education system suffers from the lack of a saleable product.
In the past ages, having a high-school diploma really meant something - that you knew basic math, history, science and English. The courses took real learning to complete, and thus even a lowly high school diploma told an employer you had an education. Yes, the real point of school was still to produce good sheeple, but at that point job markets demanded reasonably educated sheeple.
Only smart and dedicated students went on to university, where the education would allow them to rise a full societal class in terms of income. The extremely dedicated students creative enough to do real research got admitted to graduate school. Normal kids started working jobs, making money and supporting themselves.
Nowadays, however, the high-school diploma has lost all value and the bachelor's degree has begun losing its. High schools teach no vocational or even financial courses whatsoever. I, at 17 years of age right now, shall have to learn banking and investing from my parents and grandmother (who, thankfully, all handle their money quite well). The expectation, rising ever since the GI Bill (though the GI Bill was a good thing), that everyone will go to college leaves no real incentive for high schools to educate. After all, they can blame their graduate's failures to win admissions to Stanford and MIT on underfunding, the envied magnet school next town over, poverty, the parents or even the students themselves, because the school is not accountable to the local job market.
Top it off with politicians taking this obvious issue and spinning through each excuse the schools make up for their poor performance, not only to avoid confronting the real problem but because each successive scare issue over schools allows the politicians to avoid confronting the economic change that underlies all of it. Generation after generation, white men in suits tell us what's wrong with our schools, so they can keep sending jobs to Mexico and India instead of educating Americans. Nowadays a high-school diploma shows nothing other than the student's willingness and ability to slog through endless hours of busywork for no real reason or profit - exactly what modern business and government want to see.
The bachelor's degree has only begun to lose value very recently, but it's still losing its value. As ever-more Americans attempt an education that can out-earn the dying high-school diploma, they flood the job market with bachelor's degrees. And what happens when supply exceeds demand? The value of the commodity in question - in this case bachelor's educated American workers - drops. In the process, "savvier" young folks start taking master's degrees and Ph.D's solely for their financial value. Someday these, too, will bring in only a little more money than lower education and will burden young people with much more debt.
One thing is clear: Advanced degrees cannot demand high salaries while the high-school diploma falls in value. A house with a decaying foundation cannot stand.
The solution? In my opinion, we should once again make public high schools accountable to the local job market, as well as to the state and national university markets. Most universities will eagerly tell an inquirer how much money their graduates make - even for specific departments or majors. Given that high schools teach only General Education, they have no excuse not to supply such data to parents and students. Indeed, the better public schools already enjoy bragging about which universities their graduates attend.
However, many public schools no longer serve a substantial labor market. I know that Bethlehem Central High School here in Delmar, New York, USA does not. On some level, we have to bring back the high-school diploma jobs that once existed in most towns and cities of the country. Right-wingers are
I agree with this, but it was on both sides of the issues-- My history teacher was conservative, and he would lead discussion on current events. My science teacher was liberal, and he would talk about fossil fuels, global warming, and how we were all going to die, heaping liberal blame on the Bush administration for doing nothing about it. I remember most people were pretty happy though since his discussions often took away from class time actually learning something (though he justified his teachings by saying this was "a class of life".) To the person who said that school should introduce people to different viewpoints -- yes, but one viewpoint should not be taught as academic truth and endorsed by an authority figure. Also, WHEN in class should one discuss political views? While you're discussing themes of poetry? Free body diagrams in physics? Does how to solve differential equations relate to the superiority of the conservative (or whatever) viewpoint? The basic body of knowledge that one learns in high school is supposed to be politically neutral, based on rigorous proof and general agreement, etc. The only time political viewpoints should appear is in a logical reasoning class or something. Unfortunately this is often not the case.
If teachers were paid better and given more resources the job of teacher would be more sought after and a higher degree of competent teachers would be the likely result (if at the very least because higher competition would allow administrators more choices therefore weeding out those who are poor teachers). (Cultural change: 'sports stars deserve a 50 million dollar contract teachers should be happy enough just teaching my kids')
I have a few comments in reply to this point. First, the sports star that is pulling in $50e6 is helping to pull in a great deal more than that. His (her?) salary is a fraction of the money that the sports franchise and sponsors pull in. Second, the sports stars pulling in million-dollar salaries have demonstrated that they are the BEST in the field. I would happily support six figure salaries for teachers who could demonstrate marked superiority in teaching. But where the hell are they?
I do not have children, and I have not been in pre/middle/high school for a long time, so I am probably out of touch with the real issues. However, I completed a college prep curriculum without ever having a teacher use more than a text book, chalk, and a black-board. (OK, we had chemistry labs too...) I cringe when I hear that district x is in deep crap because they don't have enough computers for their kids. Huh? Since when does a solid college prep education require technology beyond a pad and pencil?
Personally, I think fewer, but more focused classes would relieve the students from having to burn calories/time in the "boring" non-essential classes until they are actually interested in them--(say, in college). Similarly, I think that if teachers could spend more time teaching fewer (but more focused) classes, they would be more likely to become proficient in those areas-- much like college professors.
One other thing that might help: Guest teachers from industry. I would certainly consider teaching a science or math class once-and-a-while if my employer was flexible enough to let me. And I would not hesitate to kick kids out of class, knowing that I don't have to stroke the parents to keep my "real" job. I think this was actually suggested in the recent study on technical competitiveness of the US....
Right with you on all of your other comments.....
There's *nothing* a Hauptschuler is more qualified for doing than someone with Abitur, it's basically a school where the stupid kids go and learn less, and the split is very early, around 12 years or so ?
This ensures a class-separated society where increasingly the good-offs and the ALG-2 people live in completely separate universes that cross only whenever the good-offs decide to visit McD.
The contrast to Norway is striking. We've got 10 years of compulsory schooling, all of it together. Which gives a much broader common platform than what German kids have. Thereafter we've got 3 years of what *we* call gymnasium, or alternatively you can choose a practical education (including training in a practical labour like in Germany.)
As it is in Germany I question the point of having Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium as 3 "different" schools. What is supposed to be the difference between those 3 alternatives ? Dumb, sligthly dumb, smart ? That's no basis for a separate school !
I, for one, work hard, and got my first job at McDonald's by impressing the owner by saying "I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty." And I meant it, even when someone did a number 2 in the urinal (ugh, that was a dark day). When i went to Frankfurt I got a tour, some guy driving us around in a Mercedes showing us the sights. He was pretty Nazi, kept saying things like, "Well, of course I as a German could never say anything like that about the jews..." and generally amusing us no end. Anyway, bottom line was, he kept complaining about the foreigners in the country (11% of Germany comes from Turkey, or something like that), even while he talked about how he hated to work, they shouldn't need to work and should get more time off. As a business owner (jlist.com) I was more than a little shocked at this. I, for one, am raising my son to respect hard work and be ready to do it himself.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com