Fixing the Dropout Crisis, Part II | Mr. Teachbad

Fixing the Dropout Crisis, Part II | Mr. Teachbad:

Fixing the Dropout Crisis, Part II

by teachbad

About a month ago, Howard Uni­ver­sity and our local NPR sta­tion, WAMU, held a teacher town hall on the dropout cri­sis in the DC area. This was one of many sim­i­lar events around the coun­try. My first take on the event can be found here.

After lis­ten­ing to the whole thing again, my first thought was to retract much of what I said ini­tially about the event being fairly unin­spir­ing and under­whelm­ing. After lis­ten­ing to most of it a third time, I’m a lit­tle less sure.

Let’s talk…

Four Things struck me as I lis­tened again.

1) The entire sys­tem is being held hostage by the bot­tom, say, 10 per­cent. Many teach­ers in effect ended up turn­ing on other teach­ers for send­ing kids up to the next grade when they should have been held back. Social pro­mo­tion. A kid who was not ready for fifth grade in the first place is moved on to sixth. The sixth grade teacher then has to deal with the same prob­lem, only now it is larger and less manageable.

Why do this? Why would a teacher send some­body up who clearly has not met even the min­i­mum stan­dards of the