Fighting School Failure Isn't Rocket Science -- We Know What Works

In the United States, 30% of youth fail high school every year, and the vast majority come from poor communities and populations of color. We must acknowledge that this is a problem of proportions that cannot be solved with tests or scholarships alone.

Only around 50% of African-American and Hispanic kids ever graduate. And nationwide, only 50% of everyone who is eligible to go to college ever does. Of these few, only 50% ever graduate from college. So we're not just talking about getting a few more kids into college, but about a serious structural problem that requires a serious structural analysis of the causes. Then we can talk solutions.

Unfortunately, a lot of funders fall short of drawing these conclusions.

Over the past 9 years the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made more than $2 billion in grants to help improve high school graduation rates in the USA. Bill Gates himself acknowledges they continue to fall short of their targets. They, like so many others, set admirable targets. In his "Annual Letter" for 2009 Gates suggests our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80% of students graduate from high school by 2025. The goal has as long a record as the challenge of school failure.

As long as there have been free public schools, the rate of failure has been more or less the same. At different times throughout the 19th and 20th century this has been of more or less consequence because the nature of the economy has changed.

However, the most reliable predictor of student failure throughout history is the background and education level of parents. So in order to solve the problem, you have to look at two things:

How do you replicate the benefits that come from the educational background of parents?

And how can you deal with the absence of these benefits as kids struggle to make it through school?

Here’s where the ethos of school-based service learning, and expansion of national service after college can be the basis of a transformative school reform perspective.

A community can help provide what a parent cannot. In fact, this is critical. Not only can this make a difference in the lives of kids at school, it also addresses the problem that failing students become alienated and all too often end up diminishing their communities. We can mobilize kids in their local communities in ways that affect their school experience and enrich their communities.

Service learning (see last week's post) is the most contemporary and useful way to re-link the chain of cause and effect. Kids can work in the community and learn about useful ways to connect to community life. They can feel useful: learn skills, learn about learning, and apply these gains to their academic studies. At the same time, they are recognized to be of value, and embraced by adults close to home. Adult support is extremely important. Teachers included. That’s why smaller classes matter.

It goes without saying, that a teacher in a class of 15 students can connect to students and their families much more directly and deeply that a teacher in a class of 40. That’s why reducing class sizes has a proven impact on performance.

The connection between teacher and parents, and students and community, through service learning supervision is of inestimal value. It has been showed over and over, both anecdotically and in studies, that a strong connection to an academically successful adult who cares about academic achievement is extremely significant in waking a student to possibilities that seemed entirely out of reach.

Finally, the assurance enjoyed by kids of well-educated and income-secure families that college follows high school, as night follows day, must be made to all kids. That assurance brings confidence and the daring to learn.