$900 Million to Help National School Dropout Rate

Today I read several articles about President Obama's 2011-budget plan to help lower the national school dropout rate, which is on average 1.2 million each year. He is offering $900 million in grants to states and school districts to help low-performing schools. This is on top of the $3.5 billion that was included in last year's stimulus bill for schools. The administration hopes to identify and work with those schools that have a 60 percent graduation rate.

After reading the approaches the states and schools have to adopt, I do not see many states or schools getting this money.

Here are President Obama's stipulations:

1. Turnaround Model: The school district must replace the principal and at least half of the school staff, adopt a new governance structure for the school, and implement a new or revised instructional program.

Implementing a new instructional program may not be hard. Even hiring a new principal may be an easy task, but finding qualified teachers is another issue.

2. Restart Model: The school district must close and reopen the school under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization. A restarted school would be required to enroll, within the grades it serves, former students who wish to attend.

Studies have proven that students in charter schools do no better or worse than children attending public schools.

3. School Closure: The school district must close the failing school and enroll the students in other, higher-achieving schools in the district.

What if there are no other schools in the district?

4. Transformational Model: The school must address four areas, including teacher effectiveness, instruction, learning and teacher planning time, and operational flexibility.

I take this to mean that if a child cannot learn it is because the teacher is ineffective, gives poor instruction, unable to plan their time and is not operationally flexible.

There is no argument that the teachers, the principal, the school board, and an instructional plan, are important elements when it comes to helping a child stay in school. However, they can only do so much. President Obama left out a very important player in his plan, the parent(s). Without the parents playing a significant role in their child's academic life, this plan will fail.

President Obama would have done better if he had put the billions of dollars towards school/family oriented programs, finding ways to get parents involved in helping to keep their children in school, instead of putting unrealistic pressure and unattainable goals on states and schools.

I attended a four-week program (one night a week) in our school district on helping your child study. It was a program designed for parents to help their child learn good study habits. Out of thousands of families in the district, four people attended the class. The instructor said she was surprised there were so many.

In a nearby school district, teachers often put restaurant gift cards in the student's homework folder as an incentive for parents to look inside. Many students return to school the next morning with the gift card still in the folder.

Say what you like about the nation's schools and teachers, but unless the parents get involved, I have doubts that the dropout rate will go down very much.

Footnote: It would be nice if states could use the money to rehire the thousands of teachers that are being laid off because of insufficient state funds, but I can just about bet that won't happen.

Related article: Obama, Cradle to Career Speech, Teachers Held Accountable and Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT) , Where is the Stimulus Funding for Illinois, Mr. Obama?

Sources: Fox News, USA Today, Wikipedia