Are things not going so well in public high school? Do you know your school choices? Are you on the brink of dropping out? Have you already dropped out? You are not alone. For example, in California, graduation rates are at their 10 year low. In the city of Detroit, only 25% of high school are getting a diploma. Something is wrong here.
I will give you my hit on what the problem is, and some solutions to consider. First of all, the "No Child Left Behind" program is having exactly the opposite effect from what was intended. This is a program that was intended to give every high school student an equal chance of getting a good high school education. In real life, "No Child Left Behind" has become a huge drop out machine.
Now that the program is maturing, some schools seem to be performing better, and students scores on the tests seem to be getting better. Wrong. What is actually happening is that slower students are being eliminated, and only the scores of the higher scoring students are being measured. In my state it is well known that drop out data is being disguised due to pressure on schools to perform well and get federal funds. The way it is done here is to not count as a drop out, any student who leaves school and states that he wants to get a GED, be "home schooled", or go to an online school. They do not know, and do not care if that low scoring student actually goes on to get a GED or whatever. All the high school cares about is that he will no longer be counted "against" them.
To me, the worst outrage is that the "No Child Left Behind" program is functioning as a filter, to separate out those kids who came from relatively more privileged, and stable backgrounds from those who have family, economic, and social problems. I know that there are children who defy all odds, and excel, but overall this is the truth. Minorities, you step over here, all others step over there. This makes me very angry. Why has President Obama allowed this to continue. My suspicion is that it is due to his poor choice for Education Secretary, Arne Duncan. Mr. Duncan is career executive who has never taught school, and would probably die of fright if he ever went to an inner city school. Duncan is a free market fanatic, and believes in holding schools, and students "accountable".
I am all for having people take responsibility for their own actions, but there is something larger at play here. I will give you an example. Here is my own story. My step daughter just dropped out of HS. This is not something I approved of or encouraged at all. I am very upset about it. In her earlier grades, she was held back twice. Being held back twice increases the chances of dropping out of school to over 90%. Somehow I thought she would defy the statistics.
My step daughter is Vietnamese. In her early school years, she had a difficult time catching up to native English speaking students. In high school she began to do well. She made the honor roll. The problem was that just after making the honor roll, she failed the state exams... again. How is it that a student who is awarded the honor roll by her high school can fail the state exams? This means that she was getting the maximum that she could from her school, but that school was substandard, and was not preparing her for the standardized tests. It also means that we had little confidence in her schools' ability to help her prepare for retesting. So, here is what we decided.
We enrolled her in an online high school. After extensive shopping, we selected a school that is medium priced, has a good curriculum, and good accreditation. We avoided schools that were attached to the public school system, and the state exams for obvious reasons. The school that we chose was National High School. If you are searching for an online high school, you will have a lot of choices. There are more than 200 of them advertised. Some are very expensive, costing $1000 per course. Some are free, and sponsored by the state.
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