High School Dropout Rate and Public Education Issues

Restructuring education in the United States is critical and much needed to keep progressing our civilization into the future. Public education is in turmoil and young people today seem to not care if they graduate or go to school at all. If the educational system is not changed in the next couple of years we'll have some hard times ahead in keeping up with other countries and providing jobs for citizens in the future.

According to CNN, 6.2 million students between ages 16-24 in 2007 dropped out of high school. A majority of these people will turn to crime and become a burden upon our society by their lack of education. It seems that most that drop out either don't care or have had a life changing situation to lead them to drop out of school.

Public education in the United States has failed to keep up with the times. Young people today require much more advanced technologies to use in the classroom. Also, we as a society need to bridge the gap between the student and their home lives. It has been proven time after time that if a student doesn't have a stable life at home they will definitely fail or fall short of doing the work in school. Some kids just don't have a chance in life because they lack the guidance or the resources to allow them to concentrate in school. It's hard to do school work when you're wondering where you're going to eat and sleep at night.

In fact, there are a lot of students that slip through high school and graduate but in reality can't read or write. Where did the public education system fail for those students? Resources in schools are limited and sometimes it's hard for teachers to know everything about all their students' lives. The personal relationship where parents talked to their kids teachers regularly is a thing of the past. Time seems to be a biggest problem for most either the parents are working or the teacher has other things to deal with in their lives as well.

Public education in the United States needs to focus more on math, science and English courses versus having all the electives for students to take. Another option is to make public education a year round requirement with a small break or two in the United States. This might help some students from quitting school because there's no long break in school days.

There are never enough right answers to cure the dropout rates in the United States. Because everything starts at home and if parents are not teaching their child the importance of education and how they need to act-what makes you think a teacher in public education can?

Hopefully, the young generation of those born between 1980 till present will wake up and demand accountability from their school systems. I hope we don't lose a generation of people that have no productivity in the United States.

Source

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/05/dropout.rate.study/index.html