In The News
What about the third R – Relationships?
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Monday, June 9th, 2008
June 9, 2008
In this morning’s Oregonian, the opinion column is titled, Putting our money where our kids are (reducing the dropout rate). Click here to read the entire column. The column is in response to an earlier editorial Putting schools on the spot
Both editorials contain advice and opinions about Oregon’s startling dropout rate (43% according to Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams).
Today’s column, by Scott Eave, vice president for human resources at Gunderson Inc., cites “The Silent Epidemic,” a 2006 report for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “which interviewed high school dropouts, (and found that) … more than 80 percent of the students surveyed indicated that teaching and curriculum needed to be improved to make school more relevant and engaging , and (that schools need to ) enhance the connection between school and work.” The author also points out that in 2005; the Portland school board adopted more rigorous graduation requirements with the goal of ensuring that students are better prepared for life and work after high school.
Rigor and relevance, clearly essential goals for our education system, but in my opinion, these columns, and so many other articles I read about our drop out epidemic, fail to address the third (and most important) R … relationships.
In the process of developing this course (ABOUT Making Connections), extensive research demonstrated that a significant part of students’ success is directly linked to having a one-on-one relationship with an adult who truly cares about what happens to them. And yet, so little is written about this essential element in the life of a kids at risk.
There is no question that kids need (deserve) opportunities to engage in experiences that demonstrate the relevance of what they are learning to their real lives. They also deserve to leave school with the skills and knowledge they will need for continuing their educations, and with the ability to find and fill jobs in the workplace. But, for so many of our kids at risk of dropping out, before rigor and relevance can shape their future, they need to feel comfortable, able to learn, welcome, and safe in our schools and classrooms. In other words, they need relationships.
Only when this need is met can they move on to the next steps on their ladders to success.
Tell Us: What do you think? Are relationships more important than rigor and relevance? What do you believe is the key to keeping kids in school? What works for your kids? What does not?
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Oregon Dropout Rate Climbs
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Thursday, April 10th, 2008
This morning’s Oregonian headline reads Oregon Dropout Rate Climbs. The article states that 8338 students quit school last year before graduating. 8338 students! No matter how you look at that number, that’s a lot of drop outs. Taking this idea further – if 8338 dropped out, how many more are at risk of doing so in the near future?
So, what can we do about it? The Oregonian article did have some answers. If you are on this site, you probably have a major clue to at least one solution, but its nice to see that we have the right idea when we point out that the most important thing we can do to help keep kids in school is as simple as this - make connections, reach out, build relationships.
This clearly works at Century High School in Hillsboro. Century has an 80% Latino population, “the ethnic group with the highest dropout rate”, but this school’s drop out rate is only 1%! So how do they do it?
Primary among the things that adults at the school do is “monitor teens constantly and step in within days when a student skips school or shows other warning signs.” Administrators and counselors reach out to kids, ask how they can help, offer counseling about the future, find ways to settle conflicts. In other words – they form and maintain relationships with students.
They also reach out to families, offer help to depressed teens, provide reading help, and make it easy for students to catch up on credits.
To read this article, Oregon high school dropout rate increased in 2007
For the latest Oregon Graduation Rate by Group statistics (just what you need to know in Lesson One) click here
To read Portland schools among the worst with dropout rates.
Let’s start talking about this.
In your opinion, and based on your experiences, what do YOU think will help reduce the drop out rate in your school, program or district. Share your stories and your ideas.
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