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The New Year is a perfect time for thinking about the dropout rate
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | January 9, 2009
It’s a new year, the beginning of a new term for the Making Connection course, and the time that Sam Adams takes on his job as Portland’s new mayor. This should be good news for Portland kids, because on of Mayor Adams’ top priorities is to reduce the high school dropout rate.
In fact, his campaign promise is to “cut the dropout rate in half.” Of course there is a lot of discussion about just what that rate really is, but according to Portland School Foundation study that he quoted, “43% of Portland Public Schools’ eighth-graders don’t graduate on schedule.”
The new mayor does have some good ideas about how to make a difference. In a recent Oregonian column about this, Anna Griffin described Adams’ ideas. These include encouraging city planners to use land-use laws and tax incentives to help working-class students and their parents find affordable homes, “rather than having to hop from one school to another.”
This makes sense based on statistics that show that changing schools one or more times raises the risk that a kid will drop out. So does his other suggestion that “businesses that offer internship programs and hire local graduates can get first crack at city contracts. (Adams is already talking about a summer internship program that will put incoming ninth-graders in the business world, to show them what life with a diploma can be.)” I am totally in favor of that too.
Griffin’s article, and so many others in the news these days, focuses on the financial obstacles that stand in the way of any changes to the schools. But her article, and I assume the new mayor, has overlooked the small ray of reasonably good news that is at the heart of the Making Connections project. While all of the new mayor’s ideas are good and important, they will require work, time, planning, dollars and infrastructure.
Yet they overlook an idea that can make a difference right now - this course offers something teachers, mentors, and parents (in fact anyone who work with kids) a simple and inexpensive way to learn the importance of, and skills for building and maintaining strong relationships with kids. We KNOW that connecting with kids, their families and the community can reduce the dropout rate - and it can happen without setting up new programs or tax incentives.
Mr. Mayor, welcome to your new job, and consider yourself invited to get to know more about this project. We’d like to Make Connections with you.
Topics: Drop Out Rate |
January 11th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
To my suprise there was very little information out there about drop out rates for elementary through middle school aged kids. I tried looking at PPS School District and also Gresham/ Barlow School Districts web pages online and found only statistics about high school drop rates. There has got to be something on this?