Trending
The Altoona Area School District is considering a number of good strategies for trying to reduce the school system's dropout rate.
However, some district residents who read -- and subsequently gave serious thought to -- an article in Tuesday's Mirror might be justified in wondering whether the district could be failing to give enough attention to two very relevant points.
The article in question reported on an Altoona Area School Board meeting last Monday in which board members participated as a committee of the whole, rather than in their official board-meeting capacity.
First, attention to the excellent ideas upon which the meeting focused:
In hopes of reducing the dropout rate and, thus, bolster the graduation rate, it was suggested that the district embrace a bigger role in playing to students' interests early in their educational path. Likewise, there was a call for getting parents more involved in their children's education experience.
Additionally, the school system was reminded about the importance of being watchful regarding indicators of potentially troubled students who are at higher risk of dropout in high school. Among the indicators mentioned were attendance problems, low grades and unacceptable conduct.
Again, those ideas are important bricks in the foundation of having a greater percentage of each school year's class receiving diplomas on graduation night.
However, now the two additional points that need to be given serious study, not only about their relevance but also on how they best can be integrated into the overall education experience:
First, while playing to students' interests early-on can be beneficial to a degree, what must be acknowledged is that students' interests often change a number of times during the course of their school years.
Therefore, playing to interests can be deemed truly valuable only to a limited extent and not eat up too much time.
The second point is that there must be beefed-up attention to what life is like after high school, whether a graduate opts to get a job, attend college, join one of this nation's military services or pursue one of the myriad other possibilities.
That beefed-up attention must focus on the fact that in most scenarios of post-high-school life, someone with a high school diploma will have better opportunities than someone without one, even if only regarding such things as determination, dependability, commitment to doing a good job, and desire to move up.
There's the issue of money.
It must be ingrained in children early on that, in most cases, a person with a high school diploma is likely to earn much more over the course of his or her working life than someone who doesn't, meaning that he or she will have a more prosperous overall life in general and so will his or her family.
Likewise, there must be no limit to well-thought-out reminders to students that someone with weak language, writing and math skills will, in most cases, be at a great disadvantage in trying to compete in the local, state, national and world economies against virtually anyone who possesses those skills.
It is crucial that anti-dropout strategies be well crafted in thoughtful ways that emphasize this modern world's most pressing realities -- first -- to interest and excite students, rather than produce the opposite result.