DISHONEST CALLS We are getting mixed and muddled figures from those persons now held responsible for gathering together and compiling information concerning the acting of high school students in the United States who, annually, become drop-outs before graduation.
The 2002 “No Child Left Behind Act” had a clause or two in it, as did other legislation before it, which required each state to report in detail on then number of student drop-outs occurring each school year. Such reports have been meager, to say the last, and ,in some cases, dishonest. A Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy, reported on the study a few months ago, as February ended that some states felt drop-outs were not a serious problem at all and records were rather sketchy. It 2003 the National Center on Education Statistics reported that eighty-five per cent of all Americans of twenty -five years of age had completed high school. Down the line, to where we now stand, few people, actually believed such glowing figures. It tuned out that such a survey came from a questionnaire filled out by people re reporting their own educational background. Total honesty ..absolute truthfulness would have been required from each and every respondent and would not include t
People have used statistics from such surveys to prove there is no drop-out problem ,while others doubt such studies and find good reason to contend that the problem of drop-out at the high school level in our system today. No one seems to know what the actual drop-out rate is in any one school district. No one actually keeps such “negative” records and information comes mainly from police and public welfare reports.
Some states report impressive percentages of graduates but the Manhattan Institute research compared the size of ninth grade classes to the number of high school graduates and came up with a figure of about thirty-per cent dropouts. New Jersey currently stands at the top of the number of high school graduates ...89 per cent, and South Carolina is at the bottom,with a 53 per cent graduates; Hispanics and blacks at around 50%.
Our National Governor's conclave this past winter agreed that the decline of our high school educational program was a major problem of concern for all of us. Think about that! What is your part going to be?
A.L.M. July 4, 2005 (c496wds)
