dropout intervention

Those of us who fight to end the dropout epidemic understand the damage that can be done by celebrities who brag about leaving school.

USC has been tackling a huge problem.

And no, we're not talking about University of Oregon running back LaMichael James (who managed just 78 yards against the Trojans during USC's 38-35 upset over the Ducks last month.)   

This problem's even bigger. Even stronger. And if you don't get ahold of it right away, it will slip away faster than James ever could.

 More than half of all pre-kindergarten children do not have basic school readiness skills. 

  They cannot count to 10. They do not know the alphabet.

  And when they come into school without these basic skills, they are more likely to stay behind — and will drop out of school at a significantly higher rate than their peers. 

We've written before about InsideOut, a program of the Mattie C. Stewart Foundation that attempts to bring at-risk students (and those who work with at-risk students) face-to-face with the reality of life without a high school diploma. 

One of those realities is prison. Certainly, not every dropout is a prisoner — but a vast majority of prisoners are dropouts.

Usually by this time of the year, about 15 percent of ninth-graders from Johnson High School in Columbia, S.C., have dropped out of school.

So far this year, none have.

A bill to raise the legal dropout age from 16 to 18 failed Monday in a Montana Senate committee.

The Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee voted 5- 5, failing to advance Senate Bill 44 brought by Sen. Taylor Brown, R-Huntley, and endorsed by State Superintendent Denise Juneau, according to the Helena Independent Record.

"Relational forms of aggression are known to increase during the middle school years..."

... and if that's not the most "no duh" sentence you've ever read in a research abstract, we don't know what is, because let's face it: Everybody knows that "tweens" can be downright mean.

If you had asked Paul Smith a few months ago what the future held for his stepson, Elijah Rice, he would have responded, “Jail.”

But not anymore. Smith, of Springfield, now proudly says that the 17-year-old will be heading to Lincoln Land Community College soon to prepare for a career as an electrician.

The numbers are impressive.

Nine of 10 at-risk seniors enrolled in a Simon Youth Foundation Education Resource Center program graduate with a high school diploma — and a majority of those graduates go on to college.

And they do it all in shopping malls.