Nevada Has The Highest Drop Out Rate. Gee, What A Shock

Today, it was announced that Nevada has the highest drop out rate in the country. Does that shock anyone?
From the Las Vegas Sun: Nevada has lost ground when it comes to high school dropout rates and ranks last in the nation, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report by the America's Promise Alliance said the number of high schools in Nevada deemed "dropout factories" rose from eight in 2002 to 34 in 2008, with the increase representing nearly 54,000 students. During that time, the state's graduation rate fell from 72 percent to 51 percent.
The term dropout factory refers to schools where fewer than 60 percent of students who started as freshman remain enrolled four years later.
Nationally, the number of dropout-factory schools fell by 13 percent.
The report cited Nevada's rapid growth during those years, as well as a soaring percentage in the number of English language learners, a "stressed and undiversified economic system," and a strong labor market for unskilled workers for the decline.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/nov/30/nv-dropout-factories-nevada/
First, our economy stinks and people have moved out of state and in case of illegals, out of the country. That has to have an effect on the drop out rate.
Second, how can you educate kids who don't show up for school? At our school, we call the parents when the child is absent, we cite students who are truant, we do some home visits and the truant officers are always busy. But if a child is absent, how can you educate them? If a student has 10 unexcused absences in a semester, the student will usually fail, per CCSD policy.
Of course, there is the problem of lack of parent involvement. I can only talk about the school I teach at, but we have monthly parent meetings. Even with the offer of free food and convenient hours, we rarely ever get more than ten parents at a meeting and we have 2300 students at our school. Clearly, the vast majority of parents are not that interested in their kid's education to even attend a hour meeting with teachers and administration once a month. This probably isn't true at all schools, but it is probably true in most inner city schools in the Valley.
Then you have a lot of students who can barely read or write English. While the ELL (English Language Learners) can help some kids, when you have a large segment of the student population, especially in the inner city, who can barely speak and write English, what chance do they have to pass the proficiency exams which are in English? How about the chances of slim to none come to mind. And, so what happens? These kids don't graduate and more than likely will drop out.
So, what can society do to change the drop out rate?
Well, the liberal answer is to throw money at the problem? Well, where to throw the money? Most of the time, they say we need to pay teachers more so we can attract higher quality teachers. Well, that doesn't address the truancy problem and the lack of English speakers in the schools. We can hire more teachers to lower class sizes, but by the beginning of November, most class sizes are a reasonable size because of the truancy and drop out problems.
Then the conservatives scream "vouchers". Well, in Clark County there is not enough private classroom space to have a decent voucher program. Of course, you can do what CCSD is doing is offer open enrollment where a student can go whatever CCSD school they want to go to. Only catch is there has to be room for the extra kids and all the "good" schools already are overcrowded, so that plan is doomed to fail. They also say there are too many administrators in CCSD and to that point, they are correct.
So, what to do: My first solution is get rid of proficiency exams. They are costly and teachers teach to the test, for the most part. In high school, the emphasis is to pass the proficiency exams. A lot kids, especially non English speaking kids, special education students and students with academic problems drop out of school because they know they can't pass the exams.
Second, offer more electives to the curriculum and reduce the graduation core academic requirements by one or two credits. At our school, we offer a limited number of elective courses. We have auto, photography, foods, art, JROTC, PE, foreign language in French and Spanish and computers for electives. Most, but not all, of these elective courses have only 1 teacher and three of the electives have 3 or more teachers. This is not a lot of electives for a high school.
Third: Get more parent involvement. Somehow, you have to get the parents more involved in their child's education. Many times in education, the parents are treated as the enemy, not a partner in education. The parent needs to feel welcome at the school. About the only time you see a parent at our school is when the child is in trouble. We need to get parents involved positively in education. It could just be a phone call home by a teacher saying their child is doing good in the teacher's class. Of course, this will take time, but not impossible. If the parent has e-mail, a quick e-mail to the parents saying what the class is doing. At my kid's school, out of 12 teachers they have, only 1 teacher has bothered to e-mail parents saying what is going on in the classroom and as a parent, I really appreciate it.
Some of my suggestions save money, cost money or there is no cost and all can be implemented if the State wants to do it. But there is big money in proficiency exams and it will cost extra money to hire more elective teachers. So, these ideas won't fly, but it is certainly better than what is going on in the schools currently.