New plan to cut Philadelphia's dropout rate
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Philadelphia's schools get a new plan Thursday aiming at cutting the dropout rate among African-American and Latino males . A task-force will present a final report on the problem to the School Reform Commission.
Thirty-seven percent of Philadelphia public school students who start 6th grade will drop out but before graduating. For African-American males, that number jumps to 43 percent, and it's 51 percent for young Latino men.
For the past ten months, School Reform Commissioners Robert Archie and Johnny Irizarry have headed the task-force charged with quantifying the problem and finding solutions. Commissioner Irizarry says the report is blueprint for immediate action.
"We don't want the report to sit on a shelf, obviously. We don't want it to be another exercise of the mind. We definitely want it to be a template for action and for transformation."
The report recommends tailoring the curriculum to young black and Latino men, increasing their ranks in honors and advance-placement classes, and doing more early intervention for at risk teens.
Students need to be retained in the primary graDES UNTIL THEY REACH THE ACADEMIC AND BEHAVIOR STANDARDS TO MOVE ON. We just socially and econmically promote these kids for political and financial reasons. We must have our students take reponsiubility for their future and not blame others. Parents must step up and be part of their own kids future.
Stop blaming schools.(Poverty, discrimination, broken homes, few good jobs, single family homes, etc. must be addressed for longtime success. Our teachers are heroes not villants(just try to teach in an inner city school for a day? I have visited my kids neighborhood schools. I weas appalled at the behaviors and lack of emapthy from students and parents. The instructors are giving their all.
Forgive me for my grammar.
The school district needs to worry about all genders instead of just that one. The most important thing to do is to make sure taht evryone graduates. I am a senior in high school and personally I think the school spends so much money on the unnecssary stuff that they fail to relize that their is, so much, more done. Overall, 56 pecent of the school district student's failed to graduate (Philadelphia inquirer news).People are failing graduate to becuase most public schools lack educational resources. Nearly 258 schools are not equipped with libraries. A school without a library is a school with no books at all. When students lack what they need that student will look to the streets.
The most consistently missing element from schools with high dropout rates is a credible focus on the future. Dropout rates will continue to be terrible until schools focus energy and time into helping students realize their own responsibility for their own futures. In 2005 we started a 10-year time-capsule and 10-year class reunion/mentoring program at our inner city middle school in Dallas. It is called the School Archive Project. Since then the two high schools our school feeds students into have become responsible for 55% of the increase in upper grade, 11th and 12th grade, enrollments among the 32 high schools in Dallas ISD. From 2000 to 2007 the high school that has received the majority of our students had an average graduation rate of 34%. The first School Archive Project students graduated in 2009 with a graduation rate of 49% for the entire high school, which was half non-Archive Project students. In 2010 the graduation rate was over 60%. Now the other middle school feeding into that high school has started its own School Archive Project and the high school, seeing what was happening, started a high school level School Archive Project. It is virtually certain the graduation rate will go above 70% within 2 years, and 80% is now within sight! We will have gone from a 34% graduation rate to 80% within a decade! Once students begin to return for their 10-year class reunions, they will receive the letters they have placed into the vault back, which includes letters from their parents about their dreams for their child. At these reunions students know we will be asking them to speak with the then current, decade younger students about their recommendations for success. Such mentoring will continue to boost graduation rates higher. It appears we have found the missing piece to the dropout puzzle! See http://www.studentmotivation.org.