Kudos to those "who stayed in and stayed strong" and "didn't give up!" Theirs are lessons for us all.
Thousands of Georgia high school students earned diplomas last spring but were never officially counted as graduates.
That included at least 130 Richmond County students and 76 from Columbia County who didn't complete school "on time," according to The Augusta Chronicle' s analysis of state student records. Statewide, at least 5,680 students graduated, but weren't on time.
No Child Left Behind, the federal education law, defines a graduate as someone who earns a regular diploma within four years and a summer.
But regardless of how long it takes or the official definition, graduating is worth the effort, said Jim Hull, a policy analyst for the Center for Public Education, an initiative of the National School Boards Association. His report Better late than never? found that students who earn a high school diploma tend more often to earn a college degree, be employed, have better job benefits, vote and be healthy compared with dropouts and GED recipients.
This holds true even for those who take longer than four years to graduate, the report said.
"There are some that believe that students who take longer to graduate do so because of lack of motivation," Mr. Hull said. "It is much more likely that these are motivated students, who for one reason or another fell behind their classmates, who understand the importance of graduating from high school and are willing to stay in school until they earn a high school diploma instead of going off to earn a GED or leaving school all together."
He estimates that 200,000 students nationwide took more than the allotted time to graduate this year. Most fall behind in ninth grade. His research found that 65 percent of dropouts didn't take a math class as ninth-graders.
Josey High School seniors Ebonie Ealim and Ricky Bernard Green Jr. will be among those who earn a diploma next month, but will not count toward their school's graduation rate.
The two 20-year-olds said they weren't going to settle for a GED.
Mr. Green wants to own a bakery and become a pastry chef. He has watched his cousin struggle after dropping out, and he didn't want to end up the same way.
"I said I'm going to stay in and stay strong," he said.
Ms. Ealim is a self-described military brat, who bounced from school to school, sometimes attending magnet programs but continually falling behind her classmates.
"Every time when I moved my scores wouldn't count," she said. "I would have to start all over."
With her grades up and down, Ms. Ealim thought about dropping out, but with an interest in engineering she kept going and set her sights on graduating.
"It may have taken me longer than all these other kids, but I didn't give up," she said.
Reach Greg Gelpi at (706) 828-3851 or greg.gelpi@augustachronicle.com.
Comments
Kudos to those "who stayed in and stayed strong" and "didn't give up!" Theirs are lessons for us all.
Yet another failure of NCLB. It is not always possible for students to graduate within the 4 year designated time period, and the reasons often have little to do with the schools. Sometimes life just gets in the way and throws a student off track. But even if the student and school work together to overcome the obstacle and achieve a high school diploma, that student will count against the school. With the 100% graduation requirement approaching (2014) expect to see a lot more schools stigmatized as failing. While we're at it, let's start a "Crime Left Behind Act", and call for police to end all crime by the same date. Absolutely ridiculous.
I firmly believe in teacher accountability; however, teacher02, don't you think we should also have a NPLB (No Parent Left Behind). Eight years ago, NEGLECT became another sub-group for child abuse. What if all teachers reported neglectful parents to DFACS? The legal system would become so clogged that it would be forced to deal with parents of students who fail to participate in the system. If attendance standards were dealt with severely, our graduation rates would rise substantially. Absenteeism is out of control in public schools. And these are the kids who do not graduate. NCLB has too many flaws. Absenteeism is a taboo subject and the citizens of Georgia will never see these statistics on the yearly "Report Card".
avidreader, while I agree that absenteeism is a big problem, it is more of a symptom than a cause of the failure rates.
Unfortunately, students who are perpetually absent often have poor academic habits to begin with or come from backgrounds that are not conducive to academic success. Even if such students were forced into the classroom (and I agree in more parent accountability), there would still be a high failure rate among the group. We already see this with perpetual troublemakers who are allowed to remain in school (when they previously would have been expelled). NCLB has caused administrators to desperately attempt to keep every child in the school, which of course only makes it tougher on the teacher and other students who are there to learn.
No politician wants to say it, but not every student needs or will achieve academic training through 12th grade. In the past, this wasn't a problem, as the students who couldn't cut it would drop out and find a vocation. I firmly believe we are both devaluing vocational professions and bringing down the high academic learners to force every student through the same curriculum in secondary education. Since our political leaders often like to point out our supposed education failings by invalid comparisons with other countries, maybe we should adopt the models of those countries. In such a model, all students are educated through middle school, and branch into vocational or further academic training based on their performance/ability shown. The federal government can continue to threaten schools through the ridiculous NCLB legislation, but there is a ceiling that any given school has, and most schools are either nearing or have already reached that ceiling. 100% of anything - graduation rate, reading, math proficiency - will never be reached. And the fact that our leaders (from both parties) can’t acknowledge that, shows the disconnect that exists.
To further reveal the disconnect, just examine the new education secretary's plan. He believes we simply need more schooling to bring us up to "par" - in the way of 6 days a week, 11 months a year! ( http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=113300&provider=top&catid...). Not only does this reveal the complete ignorance of the real problem, it is insulting during this time when counties are having to lay off and furlough teachers just to pay a 190 day contract. Not to mention, what does he think would happen to the drop out and burnout rate, let alone the highly qualified teacher pool under such a plan?
Blaming the parents is a very wise cop out. not saying it is the teachers fault either. I know in my family (brothers and daughters) all the siblings were raided the same yet some children did better than others...here is a new one, shhhh it might just be the kids fault.
If Obama really wants to do something great for this country, get rid of NCLB. It has made public education worse, not better. The schools now start teaching the tests in KINDERGARTEN. Algebra. Solid and plane geometry. Addition. Subtraction. New math. Venn diagrams. Patterns. The kids do it, but they can't figure out why they are doing it. Neither can those of us who are trying to teach it to them. They are way too young to grasp it and it just makes them lose confidence in themselves when they can't do it.
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