Dropouts
say their schools expected too little of them
By Greg Toppo,
A survey of high school dropouts
offers a surprising view of why they don't finish school. It finds that more
than six in 10 were earning C's or above when they dropped out, and nearly
two-thirds say they would have worked harder if expectations had been higher.
The survey, commissioned by
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is being released today by Civic
Enterprises, a Washington-based research firm headed by two former Bush administration
officials from his first term, John Bridgeland and John DiIulio. DiIulio served briefly as the first head of the White House
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
The survey, by Peter D. Hart
Research Associates, polled 467 geographically, racially and economically
diverse people ages 16 to 24 last summer and fall, using focus groups and
face-to-face interviews.
In many ways, the findings
aren't unexpected. For example, about three-fourths say they would have stayed
in school if they had to do it over again. But in other ways, the survey offers
small, surprising glimpses into students' worlds:
• 38% say they had "too
much freedom" and not enough rules in school, which made it easy to skip
class.
• 68% say their
parents became more involved in their education only when they were on the
verge of dropping out.
• 70% are confident
they could have graduated if they had tried.
• 81% now believe that
graduating from high school is important to succeed.
"It does give
us a perspective that we didn't have, which is the perspective of the student
who drops out," says education researcher Jay Greene, who chairs the
Department of Education Reform at the
But Greene, whose research has included studies on dropout rates, cautions that students' points of view represent only "a partial and possibly distorted picture."
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For instance, 69% of
dropouts say they weren't motivated, and another 47% say classes weren't interesting.
That is simply another way for students to say that their basic skills weren't
up to the task of high school-level work, Greene says. "Being in school
seems like a big waste of your time because you don't understand what's going
on. You can't understand the material that's being assigned to you."
The study suggests
communities support "different schools for different students,"
a nod to efforts already begun by the Gates Foundation, which has poured more
than $1 billion into school reform, primarily through financing the breakup
of large high schools and the creation of smaller "learning communities."
The study says states should consider "early-warning systems" to identify kids at risk of dropping out and to look into raising the age at which students can legally leave school to 17 or 18 from 16 in most states.
Schools also "need to do more to invite parents in," the researchers say, such as getting parents involved earlier when students miss school.