Not many other rights of passage, besides college graduation, will have such a profound effect on a person’s future than graduating from high school. Unfortunately, for up to 50% of the nation’s children, they will not have the benefits and title of high school graduate.
According to a report released in March 2006 by Civic Enterprises and Peter D. Hart Research Associates, “The dropout epidemic in the United States disproportionately affects young people who are low-income, minority, urban, single-parent children attending large, public high schools in the inner city. But the problem is not unique to young people in such circumstances. Nationally, research puts the graduation rate between 68 and 71 percent, which means that almost one-third of all public high school students in America fail to graduate. For minority students (black, Hispanic or Native American), the rate at which they finish public high school with a regular diploma declines to approximately 50 percent. Graduation rates for whites and Asians hover around 75 to 77 percent.”
If 50% of the citizens of a city in the U.S. were robbed at gunpoint for over a period of four years-there would be an outrageous cry for the police to put a stop to it and the bandits to be punished. Perhaps the National Guard would even be called in. The graduation problem has been a problem for nearly two decades. It is not a new event or issue. 50 of our youth are being robbed of an appropriate education and a future. So where is the National Guard?
In the report noted earlier, high school dropouts cited two main reasons for dropping out as:
1. Not having interesting classes
2. They were not motivated or inspired to work hard
Only about one-third of the former students interviewed stated that they were failing one or more class and that was why they left school. To the contrary, two thirds stated they:
Would have worked harder if more was demanded of them (higher academic standards and more studying and homework), and 70 percent were confident they could have graduated if they had tried.
So maybe our nation’s students are robbing themselves.
Perhaps President Bush was right when he talked about the soft bigotry of low expectations in this country. The graduation rate-or lack thereof seems more like a symptom of the problem. The real problem might just well be the low expectations of our youth. Of course, there are cases where children have to drop out to work or help support an ailing member of the family, and there will always be those heartbreaking cases where you ask what if. Yet, I cannot help but wonder what would happen if we upped the ante of our expectations for the children of our nation?