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Recent Posts for Rebekah Richards
Obama's intentions are good, but just saying "No Dropouts" isn't enough
Those involved in the fight to raise the nation’s woeful dropout rate have been waiting a long time for a president to elevate the issue to a level commensurate with the threat this epidemic poses to our nation’s future.
So it was pleasing to hear President Barack Obama say in his third State of the Union address that our nation must commit to ensuring that more students “walk the stage to get their diploma.”
But the president's prescriptive advice — not allowing students to “walk away from their education” by having every state require all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18 — demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem at hand.
Put simply: The act of dropping out isn’t about age – it’s about options.
In our work serving dropouts in partnership with more than 50 school districts across the United States, the teachers, mentors and advocates of The American Academy’s NoDropouts program see young men and women who left school because they become parents, become sick, need to earn full-time wages or are scared of bullies and gangs.
These problems have nothing to do with how old they are.
Glenn County Board of Education kills dropout recovery program. So what now?
Georgia's Glynn County Board of Education decided Tuesday to end a night school program that has helped dozens of former dropouts and at-risk students graduate from high school.
And that decision may impact the ability of some 148 other students to graduate, if they don't do so by May.
The board said it was killing the year-old Coastal Education High School program at the conclusion of next semester, because of its cost, as well as a fear that it might be pulling students away from regular high schools, according to The Brunswick News.
L.A. reverses course: Are 'tough-love' truancy programs causing more dropouts?
The Los Angeles Police Department has reversed course on a slate of get-tough-on-truancy policies that included truancy sweeps, $250 tickets and mandatory court appearances that could result in jail time for parents, The LA Times reported this week.
Bravo.
Former dropouts love our online learning program — but we can do even better
From teachers to technical support, American Academy students gave their online program high marks when surveyed by Washington State’s Digital Learning Department.
The recently released survey results show that nearly nine out of every 10 members of The American Academy’s student body — mostly dropouts and other studentsat risk of dropping out — report being satisfied with the program.
Oakland dropout rate: Students need more options
Newly released state data shows California suffers from an abysmal 18.2 percent dropout rate — and the situation is more than twice as bad in Oakland, where one in two students fails to leave high school with a diploma.
That is a failure of epic proportions.
When it comes to our nation's dropout epidemic, there is no silver bullet solution. Winning this fight is going to take a lot of good ideas from a lot of good people — and a lot of hard work on top of that.
To that end, we're pleased that San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson has offered his take. In a column in Tuesday's newspaper, Mr. Johnson called for a stronger vocational training program for Oakland's students.
Re-enrolling students is the easy part — getting them to graduation day is the real challenge
Cumberland County, N.C. school officials have a lot of work ahead of them as they try to find and re-enroll more than 600 high school dropouts. We can say from experience, though, that the efforts are well worth it.
A lot of effort goes into keeping students in school — and too little energy is spent trying to get students back into school once they've dropped out. So when we reach out to dropouts on behalf of school districts across the country, we find that many are shocked to learn that someone still cares about their education — and having experienced life as a dropout, many are eager to get started again.
Keeping the No Child Left Behind mandate on track
A “slow-motion train wreck.”
That’s what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
You probably know that 10-year-old piece of legislation as No Child Left Behind. But we’ve noticed that, in the midst of a nationwide mutiny over the law’s provisions, many have abandoned the act’s far-more recognizable nickname.
Could that be because these educators, administrators and politicians would rather forget that, a decade into this federal exercise in education reform, they have indeed left so many children behind?
Online learning: It's not about choosing sides
The polar positions set forth in a recent piece in The New York Times about the rise of online learning — particularly as it applies to credit recovery — go a little something like this:
"Online learning is all about the kids."
"Online learning is all about saving a buck."
The piece, by Times reporter Trip Gabriel, should be required reading for anyone who cares about education reform. It certainly highlights the entrenched positions by each side in the online learning debate.
But it might be missing something important that we've noticed about the rise of online learning: Most teachers, parents, students, administrators and other leaders have not chosen sides — and most probably will not.
When it comes to dropping out, “can’t” doesn’t mean “won’t”
It’s a start.
But let’s get one thing straight: That’s all it is.
Over the past few months, lawmakers in Kentucky, Georgia, Montana and other states have been debating bills that would raise the age at which students can drop out of school.
Six things we’d like to hear from Michelle Rhee
For more than a month the education world waited to see where Michelle Rhee, the firebrand former chancellor of the long-suffering D.C. Public Schools system, would hang out her next shingle.