You can check out the new data at the below link. (Be sure to look at the adjusted rates on the right side of the sheet.)
http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/DropoutReporting/DropoutsByED.aspx?cDistrictName=ALAMEDA&cCountyCode=0100000&cDistrictCode=0000000&cSchoolCode=0000000&Level=County&TheReport=EthOnly&ProgramName=All&cYear=2006-07&cAggSum=CTotGrade&cGender=B

Oakland’s four-year dropout rate is now estimated at 36 percent (down from 37.4 percent), and the state says that 10.5 percent of Oakland high school students dropped out in 2006-07, not 11 percent.

Hardly major swings, but I thought I’d keep you all up to date.

In my work with high school students, there are significant and understandable reasons for not attending classes or for dropping out of school. Many students do not understand classroom English. As a consequence, when somethning is presented, the student in unable to understand what is being discussed. They cannot retain what has been said. This promotes a sense of “being stupid and a desire to pull away from any embarrassment that would arise within the classroom.

Secondly, many of our children cannot read well. If they cannot read, they cannot understand what the asssignments have required that they learn. No one can write any better than they can read and so if reading is limited, so is a student’s ability to write.

So, what does a student have to look forward to in attending class? They cannot understand the language of the classroom, they cannot read well or comprehend what they have read, they cannot write and they do not want to feel stupid. It only makes sense that someone in that state of affairs would not attend class, do their work, turn in assignments or stay long enough to graduate.

Mary Pippitt’s Reading First program for K-5th grade recently won a national award for most reading improvement in the primary grades in the state of California. The kids coming through Oakland’s primary grades are now learning to read and write and develop facility with classroom English. Hopefully the consequence of this program will prepare students, by the time they have entered high school, to be prepared for what is being asked of them. The only fly in the ointment is that Pippitt’s program is not going to continue to be funded by the district. In the absence of her program or programs like her’s what will happen to our children? In light of what Pippitt’s program is doing for our children, shouldn’t the district provide basic funding for the program to continue?

And that decision – to walk out of high school – has been made over and over for well over 100 years by America’s teens. They usually leave because they were flunking out of that school’s proferred program anyway. It is not an irrational decision for them to make and humans can usually be trusted to select their own pleasures.

The public schools would do better by giving students more choice on educational programming rather than taking the one-size-fits-all – including the exit exam. One exit exam shouldn’t fit all either.

US schools should start looking at the model used by other industrialized societies where students are sorted usually by puberty and thereafter, nationally, and offered various certifications and options based on performance and/or prerequisites. Students with no aptitude for Algebra or lab sciences shouldn’t be forced into them. People who say they want to be physicians should have various “put up or shut up points” to qualify to remain in that track.

And with the stream of wanna-bes for expensive training thus focused and narrowed we should not have to charge $30k a year for university training.

I have experiences with plenty of people who were high school or earlier dropouts. The vast majority of them couldn’t have done much else. Many have ended up well enough. They found other educational and training programs that gave them what their public schools could not. – They got jobs, learned on the jobs, and went back to specialized classroom training later in life – often through work, the union, etc.